Laughing over your sexuality has become stylish in Bollywood. In a television interview, Karan Johar talked about himself as the man who made movies, paused after the word ‘man’ and wisecracked, “That’s if I’m one, going by all the rumours around.” Laughter of course.

When Shah Rukh Khan, bored with the inane quizzing over his war with Amitabh Bachchan, said that the question, the topic itself was passé, he added, “It would be more interesting if people started asking me if I was having an affair with Abhishek Bachchan!”

He has grown up. The actor who’d be on the phone all night hurling the choicest four-letter abuses if one even made a passing mention that he fancied one of his co-stars like Juhi Chawla, is now actually able to smile away a tiresome question. And sprinkle the dimpled smile with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour as well.

At one time, questioning a man’s sexuality was like signing his death warrant as a star. Actor Deepak Parashar (once a big time model and BR Chopra’s discovery), who has now been relegated to roles on the telly, seriously believed that a cover highlight in a glossy that carried his vehement denial, “I am not gay!” did him in as an actor. Never mind the denial. The very fact that his sexuality was questioned was enough to make his virility vanish before his fans. Or so he believed for endless years, citing that one cover line as the reason for his vanquished stardom.

Mercifully, Shah Rukh and Saif Ali Khan didn’t lose their screen potency when they did the uninhibitedly funny Kantabai act in Karan’s last production Kal Ho Naa Ho. And all of SRK’s cheeky retorts in magazines have not robbed him of his fans. Witness the hysteria at the box-office — Shah Rukh and Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna has opened worldwide to such a thumping response that tickets for the weekend were not available on the day that the advance counters opened. And he’s the original loverboy in the film, sexuality be damned.

As Independence Day rolls closer, making noises about democracy is also very fashionable. The Gujarat government handed a new reason for the film industry to start off once again about Aamir Khan being Modi’s marked man. The forest department has suddenly woken up to issue a notice to the producer of Lagaan for illegally shooting (with a movie camera) a chinkara in his film. To rake that up more than four years after the film was released does put the notice in the questionable, witch-hunt category.

But strangely, while there is so much vocal support for Aamir Khan in his battle of wits against Modi-Narmada, there was a film that was released on the same day as Lagaan and its beleaguered hero too has been fencing boycotts and bans, without any visible support from his colleagues. Gadar was released on the same day as Lagaan and, disturbingly, to this day, Pakistani shop owners in the US and Canada do not stock any VCD or DVD (music or film) that features Sunny Deol in it. Also, theatre owners in certain sensitive pockets all over the world don’t screen his films. And all because of his celluloid exploits against Pak authorities in a film called Gadar!

Few know that Sunny Deol has been under such pressure that even today, when he flies to Europe, he makes a request to his producer that the flight should not be via Dubai where too his purported anti-Pak screen antics have hurt many. The ban on Sunny Deol is unfair because, if one were to closely watch the controversial scene in Gadar, one would realise that the hero has no problem saying, ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ to please his father-in-law (Amrish Puri). But when he’s asked to shout an anti-Hindustan slogan, he refuses. And the battle begins. Now how fair is it to classify him anti-Pakistan for that scene and to ban him for so many years?

Interestingly, just when Indo-Pak relations have reached a nadir again, Sunny Deol seems to have crossed the border. There’s a film coming up called Kaafila, based on illegal immigrants. (It’s being made by the same film maker, Ammtoje Mann, who scripted the anti-Sikh riots with stark realism in his last film Hawaayein.) If celluloid roles make a difference, Kaafila should appease the very people who currently refuse to stock Sunny Deol’s films. Guess what Deol plays in this film? A heroic Pakistani officer!

Hey, psst!

For two years after Ashutosh Gowariker made Swades, the caravan that Shah Rukh Khan drove to the village and camped in, in the film, was parked on the road outside the film maker’s house. It has suddenly disappeared. “Yes, I’m kind of missing it, it’s gone for a face lift,” laughs Ashutosh Gowariker who also directed Aamir Khan’s Lagaan. While Aamir battles the Gujarat government, Ashu has moved on and is immersed in the making of Akbar-Jodhabai, a lavish historical with Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai. His SMS reads, “Don’t be surprised if you now find an elephant parked outside my house.”

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International