Is Jeetu Bhaiya from Kota Factory queer? Notes on reading sexuality in narratives where it's not explicit

Queer Gaze is a monthly column where Prathyush Parasuraman examines traces of queerness in cinema and streaming — intended or unintended, studied or unstudied, reckless or exciting.

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There was a sense that with liberalisation — of the family and the economy — the love story would change. The conflict in love, usually reserved for family opposition on the basis of class and religion, was now, it seems, rendered moot. There was a sense of dated joy in watching Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge . We have moved on, haven’t we?

But caste and sexuality came into the radar with a sweeping demand for their own drama. The opposition was still familial. The idea was still that the family as a unit can be threatened, and the progeny tainted. Thus, for the longest time, queer ‘representation’ came to mean queer people and queer stories in the same, old template.

This felt like a failure of imagination. Gautam Bhan, an LGBTQ+ rights activist and faculty member at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, had once noted, “In India, an equal rights argument means you [have> the right to be as f*cked up as straight people. No one has sexual freedom… this whole question of compulsory marriage — you have inter-caste couples that are being burnt alive, you have inter-religious couples that are being chased… What is [the goal>? Marriage like Mr and Mrs Gupta who came from the same class, the same age, the same income… who had to get married at 26.”

Should queer conflicts run the same course as their predecessors? Where a character is defined by their sexuality and only that. Neither of the biggest commercial films on queerness — Dostana, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga , and most recently, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan — afforded their queer characters any interiority beyond their sexuality. In Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, we know nothing about the lead characters, including how they met. The entire film is concocted around appeasing the parents, so the two men can finally circumambulate the marital flame seven times. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga made Sonam Kapoor’s character a chronic introvert because that seemed like the easiest way to rationalise a boring character.

It seems that shredding dimensions of a character is necessary to make them marginal figures. This seems to be how we make a character palatable to the masses —  whatever or whoever the masses are. (Pauline Kael, the New Yorker critic, had once said, “Movies indicate what the producers thought people would pay to see.” How do producers think?) I wonder if we can ever talk about sexuality in a character as a casual detail, or should it always be loaded with context and conflict?

In a recent interview I did with Kota Factory writer Saurabh Khanna and director Raghav Subbu to piece together how they created the character of Jeetu Bhaiya, the supportive teacher and the agony aunt of the Kota students, I had asked about the sexuality of the character, and this had riled up a few readers.

Why wonder about their sexuality if it is not already provided to you in clear dialogues?

Besides, this was not an entirely odd theory. The director himself noted how he had been often asked if Jeetu Bhaiya is gay. This might be because Jitendra Kumar, who plays Jeetu Bhaiya, also played Aman Tripathi, one of the gay men in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan. Iconic roles tend to leak into one another, colouring the viewer’s impression. Additionally, Jeetu Bhaiya has a prominent earring, which, like the nose ring Ayushmann Khurranna wore in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, seemed like an explicit iconography to connote his sexuality. (The director brushed such theories aside though, noting the earring was a reference to his Indian roots, a gesture tainted by the West as sexual.)

But what got me interested in this question was Jeetu Bhaiya’s reaction to the women of his age on the show. In the first season, when he is introduced via voice-over outlining his heroism, a woman walks in slow-motion tucking her hair behind her ear in a flirtatious gesture as Jeetu Bhaiya walks past, unmoved. In the second season, they even bring another woman teacher, who is written with such lazy strokes, it seemed increasingly plausible that she was just the ’love interest.’ But alas, she leaves the show just as abruptly as she walked in, without fluttering any heart.

So I kept wondering what Jeetu Bhaiya’s sexuality was. Over two seasons, the makers did not give a single peek at his love life, only theatrics in class to entertain his students. (The director had told me it was more interesting to see him in the second season struggle with starting his own institute than to show him going on dates.) This kind of anonymity is often afforded to queer characters, as they are to queer people in real life who do not want to talk about their sexuality. It felt like a subtle detail, not unlike reading older films as queer because of a glance (Anand), a song (Sholay), or even full-throated confessions of jealousy of a friend’s lover ( Satya ). Besides, it made the show more endearing and discerning in our heads than it was playing out on the screen.

Prathyush Parasuraman is a critic and journalist, who writes a weekly newsletter on culture, literature, and cinema at  prathyush.substack.com .