Memories pierce the heart: Homoeroticism, Bollywood-style

In this essay, I enjoy using Amitabh Bachchan, perennial idol of the Bollyw ood screen, as a point of departure for ruminations on the construction of male friendship and male love within both Indian cinema and its primarily m ale audience (which, in a sense, represents in turn Hindi culture at large) . Using translations of songs from Amitabh's films interlaced with my own p ersonal experiences, we see how homosexuality thrives in covert yet recogni zed places in Indian culture, and how subtler forms of homosexuality are ac tually engendered under the auspices of normative patriarchal culture. Song s were translated by the author in collaboration with Jia Das.