#kuhu

**I’m basically going to talk about the entire movie so, spoilers ahead**

Characters: Kuhu & Sweety 

From: Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga

Representation: Lesbian 

Their Importance: This movie ranks as one of the most important movies to me, especially as a queer Indian girl. Growing up, I’ve never really had LGBT+ characters who weren’t stereotypes or who had tragic deaths. It’s gotten better, but in that small pool I still rarely ever get to see any LGBT+ Indians, which is why this movie means so much to me. While ELKDTAL is not Bollywood’s first LGBT+ movie, it is one of the first mainstream ones, and it portrayed both characters as real people!

Kuhu plays a smaller role in terms of screentime, but what she does with that role is fantastic. She is a confident lesbian woman who encourages Sweety to also be more confident and open and not take any abuse from her brother. Kuhu is entirely comfortable with herself and wants Sweety to be so as well, and she freely calls out Sweety for thinking she’s abnormal, but she never outs Sweety or tries to get her to do anything beyond her comfort level. She also freely says that she likes women to Sweety when she realizes that Sweety is definitely into her - to see a strong, confident brown woman with absolutely no hang-ups or shame in her sexuality was wildly important to see. 

Sweety is the main character, personally, who I personally feel more connected to. You get to follow Sweety’s story and it’s in the middle that we find out that she’s a lesbian - something that I think a lot of people probably pick up on fairly quickly (especially as many people had seen the trailer and speculated it was an LGBT+ story), but others may not have. It can be seen as a plot twist, but I think it’s also important that the audience - many who may be brown folks who don’t recognize or approve of homosexuality - got to fall in love with the character of Sweety first. They’re rooting for her “romance” with the male character, love her character for who she is, and then find out that she’s a lesbian, which forces the audience to look at themselves and see if they no longer like her because of her sexuality, or if they accept her and her sexuality. It pushes the audience to try and move past those views - especially in the form of Sweety’s father, who’s initially angry about her being a lesbian but proceeds to wonder why she feels so lonely (and honestly, I think this post sums it up the best). 

Sweety sometimes gets criticism for being passive or “emotionless” in her story, but I also think it’s a main point of her character. She is terrified of being seen as a failure to her family or someone to be mocked. From a young age, she’s seen her brother, who she idolizes, mocking and beating her friend for being gay, and throughout the movie, he continues to make her afraid because she’s a lesbian and he thinks it’s “shameful.” Sweety has constantly felt like she has to hide herself away and in a truly heartbreaking scene that gets her father to understand the pain she’s in, likens the feeling of being closeted as like being in a glass cage, where she can’t freely express who she truly is. She is an incredibly accurate representation of a closeted queer girl to me. 

The movie also acknowledges the representation, and how important it is - Sweety and her friend put on a play that has Sweety & Kuhu as the main love interests, and when it’s revealed that their characters in the play are in love, the crowd’s reaction is mixed. Some people initially believe it is a comedy and start laughing, and once they realize that it isn’t, you see a larger array of emotions - many people are angry and walk out, but others are sitting there still watching the play. You get shots of a young girl who’s watching with tears in her eyes, a family still watching the play, an older man who’s enthralled by it - you see acceptance from those people, as well as implied LGBT+ people who were clearly touched by the play that they had just seen. The play isn’t necessarily all that well-received, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less successful, because it still gave a voice to LGBT+ people. Sweety herself decides to continue the play to give that to a child who may be just like her and I love that the movie does that. 

Another thing that’s important is that while the movie doesn’t shy away from the fact that there would be pushback and homophobia (ie Sweety’s brother views her being a lesbian as an “illness”, and while her father accepts her in the end, after he finds out he is initially angry and upset) it also doesn’t fail to give its characters a happy ending. 

Her grandmother embraces her (but not Kuhu, as she’s not there yet), her father embrace her and Kuhu into the family, but oddly enough, it’s what the ending does with her brother that I love the most. Throughout the movie, Sweety’s brother was most definitely homophobic and threatening - he would force Sweety to stay at home, damaged her cell phone so she couldn’t contact Kuhu anymore, and tried to get her to marry his male friend, all the while telling her that she was shameful and embarrassing and had an illness. These scenes are hard to watch and to a lot of us may seem to clearly show him in the wrong, yet while watching with my more-progressive-than-others mother, she’d get uncomfortable with the scenes but still say that he was just trying to protect his family. While this is obviously just one person, it’s a statement I’ve seen echoed a lot in my community, and while I love my community, I also have to admit that I think more people would fit into the role of Sweety’s brother rather than her father. Throughout the movie, I was dreading seeing what would happen in other LGBT+ movies I’ve watched before - the violent homophobe ends up fully accepting their victim and are then absolved from all the awful acts that they’ve done before. 

But that didn’t happen. In the end credits, when we see how everyone in the family is reacting to Sweety/Kuhu, we see her brother show up. He still thinks that she’s ill and that his family is crazy for accepting her, but the difference now is that instead of having any power over her or her image, his family actively rolls their eyes at him and don’t put any thought into his words. Considering there may have been people who supported him or are like him watching, I hope it showed how awful his views are, and how those words don’t deserve to have power. And for LGBT+ audiences, the ending shows how life can be while also acknowledging the realistic fact that not everyone is going to like it and/or that people won’t accept it 100% but can still try. It’s a wonderful message - that other people don’t get to take away your own happy ending. 

WHEN SWEETY TOLD HIM SHE MIGHT KILL HERSELF IF SHE CAN’T BE WITH KUHU HE TOLD HER NO AND LET HER HUG HIM AND PROCEEDED TO CREATE A WHOLE FUCKING PLAY TO LET SWEETY AND KUHU BE NEAR EACH OTHER AND TACKLE HOMOPHOBIA AND HOW HARMFUL HETERONORMATIVITY IS.

AND HE DID IT ALL BECAUSE SWEETY IS HIS FRIEND. HE FOUND SUCCESS IN CREATING A FRESH NEW STORY BY PARALLELING THE TRUTH; REALITY. BY GIVING QUEER VOICES A PLACE TO BE HEARD, FOR A MESSAGE TO BE SENT OUT AND TO ENLIGHTEN PEOPLE. ALL TO HELP SWEETY AND KUHU BE TOGETHER.

𝕂𝕦𝕙𝕦 (Hindi: कोहु Bengali: [kü: hü]):