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Moments before the stage is (literally) set for the big reveal in Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, the film offers a narrative ruse. Sahil Mirza (Rajkumar Rao), hopelessly smitten by Sweety (Sonam Kapoor) and freshly recovering from the knowledge that she in fact likes another girl, attempts to help in his new role as a confidante. A (failed) dramatist, he scripts a play — closely mirroring Sweety’'s life, her struggles the isolation she has been forced to inhabit since childhood — and under the garb of requesting members of her family to participate intends to break it down to them. Unaware of its origin or the set-up, they agree but are visibly rattled on hearing the ‘'story'’. Her father, Balbir Chaudhary (Anil Kapoor) dismisses the premise as improbable but his mother (Madhumalti Kapoor) justifies its existence: “"It is a comedy”". The matriarch'’s reasoning, which unwittingly serves as a commentary, works. Potrayed as a film aficionado, homosexuality for her has existed as an off-shoot of comedy in celluloid, and for good reasons. Same-sex love or even a lone representative from the community has been routinely introduced as a subplot to elicit laughter. They have been treated as the excess the genre of comedy is known for. Hitesh Kewalya employs the same ruse in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, except the excess here is not the behavioural attributes of the homosexual protagonists but the reactions to them. The joke is on the expectation that presupposes homosexuality to be funny. It is on Balbir Chaudhary’'s mother and the likes of her. It is on us.

Kewalya'’s film, touted as the first to bring homosexuality within the purview of the mainstream, does not revolve around a character'’s discomfiting — freeing — realisation that they do not fit in nor concludes with them mustering the courage to come out. It is not preoccupied with locating the moment the cat is let out of the bag. In Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, the cat is already out, prowling stealthily, even meowing occasionally. When we meet Kartik Singh (Ayushmann Khurana) and Aman Tripathi (Jitendra Kumar), one is helping the other to get up on a train even though both are wearing capes. Being salesmen, the outfits are occupational hazards but they serve a bigger purpose of subverting the hypermasculinity associated with superheroes and underlining the characters'’ innate mutual dependence, in spite of and because of the capes. They have discovered themselves and each other from the outset. But are discovered when on their way to Aman’'s sister’s wedding, his father sees both men kissing in a moving train. The ensuing comedy constitutes the disarray his immediate and extended family are thrown into as each becomes privy to this ‘'information’'.

What has been the perception of our society ___towards homosexuality?

A) Comedy

B) Tragedy

C) Normal

D) None of the above