While Aligarh, a movie about a gay professor had to bleep out the word ‘homosexual’ from the soundtrack before its telecast, Leena Yadav’s Parched seems to be in a far more comfortable space in its depiction of alternate sexuality. The Censor Board of Film Certification has more or less let scenes from Parched, showing Tannishtha Chatterjee caressing Radhika Apte intimately, remain in the movie. Says Leena Yadav, “I’m indebted to the CBFC. When the board members saw my film, they told me that they didn’t want to cut a single shot. If they had cut anything in the film, I don’t think I’d have allowed it to be released in India. I’m very fortunate, I guess.”
When asked to comment on the depiction of the lovemaking scene in Parched, chief of the board Pahlaj Nihalani said, “The CBFC is painted as bigoted, over conservative and under-informed, when in fact films are judged for individual merit and context. I haven’t personally seen the film, but the scenes show two brutalised and tormented women coming together. It’s a moment that defines the emotional, rather than the physical context of the two characters’ friendship. There’s nothing titillating or sensational in the scene.” Pahlaj feels that it’s wrong to see the CBFC as a board that reacts with disapproval to any sign of sex or violence. “We allow scenes that are done sensitively. But we won’t allow gratuitous sex and violence.”
