Although this story is a year old it just fell into Queerguru’s in-tray this morning, and immediately brighten the mood of the entire team. T-Series one of the biggest Bollywood studios released its first major romantic comedy where its main character is gay. 

India’s very prolific movie industry is notoriously old-fashioned and conservative so this really is  a major breakthrough,  One that paid off it would seem as within 24 hours of the trailer being released it racked up an amazing 51 million hits.

Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (Be Extra Careful About Marriage) follows a same-sex couple Kartik and Aman as they attempt to navigate their way around the homophobia and ignorance they face on a daily basis. 

The film stars Ayushmann Khurrana and Jitendra Kumar, who play Kartik and Aman who fall in love to the dismay of their families. The movie follows the pair as they struggle to win over the support of Aman’s parents who are unable to accept the fact that their son is gay and attempt to set up an arranged marriage to break the couple apart. 

In true Bollywood fashion, everything is so exaggerated and much larger than life.  However kudos to the filmmaker for making sure that in this thoroughly enjoyable comedy, the gay characters are NOT the butt of the jokes.   Rather the film finds humor in the ridiculousness of their situation. 

The T-Series YouTube channel contains several videos from the film, but you can stream the whole movie on Amazon Prime