Summary: A clip from the film Silsila (1981) directed by Yash Chopra, starring Shashi Kapoor, Amitabh Bacchan, Jaya Bahaduri, Rekha.
The story of this film is about extramarital affairs and bears a close resemblance to real life events. What is intriguing in this scene between the two brothers bathing together, is the acknowledgement of homosexual acts. The reference to bending down to pick up the soap and thus exposing yourself to penetration from behind, is a familiar gimmick and joke in hostels and has been used in prison scenes in movies as well.
The physicality in this scene between the two brothers also is marked. Even contemporary films like My brother Nikhil (2005) do not show any scenes of love making, nudity or implied nudity, as is easily shown in this film. Though various films have shown male nudity (Rahul Bose in English, August and Split Wide Open among others), only one has shown male nudity in relation to homosexuality - Dattani's Mango Souffle. These films usually have fallen within the alternative or rather non-mainstream bracket of films.
This clip is part of the Queering Bollywood database, an exhibition and demonstration of a collection of queer readings of Indian cinema. This open and collaborative database of articles, film clips, magazine stories, etc., has been compiled by Namita Malhotra, Lawrence Liang and many others at Alternative Law Forum and in Bangalore. For more, see
http://media.opencultures.net/queer/