Hitesh Kewalya is making his directorial debut with Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, which is about a man from a small town grappling for courage to come out of the closet.
The film has also been written by Hitesh, who felt compelled to tell the story after seeing struggles of his friends, belonging to the LGBTQ community, whom he met during his student days in National Institute of Design (NID) in Delhi.
Even though he gets that there’s a specificity of the experience of being queer and living that life, which a straight person will never truly understand, he says it doesn't mean that he doesn't understand homophobia.
"Someone (a queer person) might not directly be invovled in this film, but I have a lot of friends from the LGBTQ community who I have known for the past 20 years. And I know their stories, not as someone working in a project but as a friend. I've seen their struggles. I've spoken to them after the Supreme Court's decision about whether or not their lives have changed. I have tried get into all that learning. It's also about being sensitive towards the subject," Hitesh tells us.
"This is also a stereotype that being a heterosexual person, I can't write about homosexuality. Maybe I can't understand as a person from the community would but I definitely understand homophobia. I definitely understand the society that I've grown up in. The film is about that," he adds.
Hitesh says that the film is largely about homophobia and to what extent the society can go to not accept it when someone comes out of the closet.
"Like any other good story, we are dealing with emotions in this story also. We're dealing with love which has no gender. It remains the same all across. We're not trying to intellectualise it. We're trying to emotionalise it. Let's accept it, we all are homophobic or have been at some point of time in our lives. As a generation, we have to take that cross on us and maybe hope that the next generation is lesser," he points out.
Moreover, he notes that to tackle an important subject such as this, there was no better way than humour.
"We have this big misconception that a comedy is not as sensitive as an emotional movie. Comedy is a serious business and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron is an example of that. It's high time that we take comedy seriously. I think it's extremely challenging to take up a serious subject and make a lighter movie, which not only make the audience laugh, but also leave them thinking. It is a misapprehension that comedy is easy or light. Comedy is heavy. It is a potent tool to talk about the right things in a non-serious manner but it talks seriousness," he says.
Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan, also featuring Jitendra Kumar, Neena Gupta and Gajraj Rao, is currently playing in theatres.
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