Perhaps most to the point, it is a tear-jerker, a story of forbidden love and its social consequences. Taran Adarsh, the editor of Trade Guide, a weekly film-industry publication, called it "a lump-in-the-throat movie."
In the film, Nikhil is a star swimmer and the golden child in his family until the day he is found to have HIV. His parents shun him, his friends abandon him and he finds himself locked up in a dirty sanatorium. The two people who do stand by him are his sister and his partner.
One of the most disturbing episodes in the film was lifted from real life. Just as Nikhil is quarantined in the film, the first Indian to be diagnosed with HIV, a young man in Goa named Dominic D'Souza, was similarly confined and isolated in the late 1980s. In other words, as Suri noted, "it took 15 years" to represent that indignity onscreen.
Still, Onir said, it was not easy to make the film. Both he and Suri knew it was a gamble. Some potential producers declined. Others suggested that the gay theme be excised, a suggestion Onir said he declined. Friends and well-wishers counseled Suri to be careful playing a gay lead, warning that it could bode ill for his career.
"At the end of the day, everyone wants to play it safe," Suri said.
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