Dosti Deliberations The Evolution of Heterosocial Friendships in Popular Indian Media

Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center 

This Article seeks to trace the ways in which the portrayal of heterosocial amity has evolved in Indian mainstream media over the last few decades alongside the rise of queer social and legal movements. Focusing on the evolution of asexual and non-sexual exits from failure to welcome possibility, the piece makes three interrelated suggestions. First, using three sites - Bend it Like Beckham, Dostana and Made in Heaven - I suggest that with sociolegal change in the law, there is increasing nuance in the portrayals of homo erotic possibility on screen. In turn, I suggest that this increasing nuance has offered radical possibility for the portrayal of hetero-social friendships from not merely impossible (e.g. Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna), secondary to romance (e.g. Kal Ho Na Ho) or an undesirable failure narrative (e.g. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), but as primary sought-after outcome(e.g. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil). The focus on mainstream cinema – and particularly Karan Johar's archive - is intentional: while there has been an increasing discography of the queer media archive, there has not been a focus on its possibilities for asexuality and amity. Further, while there are accounts that complicate the friendship archive in less mainstream media (e.g. a movie like LOEV which witnesses the blurring lines of homosocial sexual amity, or the beautiful Karwaan which explores a homosocial friendship narrative without triggering audience anxiety of having to witness an unlikely unrequited romance), following the navigation in the archive of popular cinema offers a different pulse for audience expectations and acceptance. Together, I argue that the increasing mainstream visibility of queer movements have offered a specific kind of radical exit for straight friendships on screen that have not always been present, and that this new lens offers us new lease on considering radical legal extensions to our deliberations of dosti as active and radical possibility.