Mumbai: Filmmaker-writer-podcaster Ashish Sawhny has come a long way from being a bullied child who found safety and empowerment in the loving home of his grandmother, writer Ismat Chughtai. Now he views himself as a queer elder keen to mentor younger people in their creative journeys. At the 17th edition of the Kashish Pride Film Festival, held in Mumbai from June 3-7, Sawhny spoke at length about the thought process behind establishing the Ismat Chughtai Award to encourage and support transwomen and cisgender women filmmakers. He instituted the award, including a trophy and a cash prize, in 2023. This is the fourth year of its existence.It pays homage to the woman who faced an obscenity trial for writing the Urdu short story Lihaaf that describes sexual intimacy between two women, and continues to be read widely because of its iconic status and the woeful lack of lesbian representation in Indian literature. In this interview, Sawhny talks about his new film The Sailor and the Chef, an upcoming book on Chughtai, the youth-centric nature of queer culture, and contemporary queer politics in India.Filmmaker-writer-podcaster Ashish Sawhny. Photo: By arrangementA Q&A with Ashish Sawhny:Chintan: Why did you decide to set up an award at Kashish in Ismat Apa’s name?Sawhny: I thought Kashish was the perfect place to institute an award in her name because of the essentially pro-humanist and pro-diversity and inclusivity sort of principles that she lived by. It felt like the right match also because I have been regularly showing my films at Kashish and speaking on panel discussions at the festival. When I suggested the idea of this award to festival director Sridhar Rangayan and artistic director Saagar Gupta, they liked it and jumped at it. What part of your life did you get to share with Ismat Apa?My parents (Seema and Naveen Sawhny) used to live in Bangalore. They separated when I was four or five years old, so I came to Bombay to live with my Nani at her apartment near Marine Drive. I shared her bedroom from the time that I was five till I was 14, which is when I was given my own room. Those were very impressionable years. Living with Nani is something that I will always be grateful for. She passed away in 1991, so she lived till I was 21. What kind of conversations did you have with her about Pakistan and Partition?She was very clear that she did not want to leave India because India was her homeland. She was wooed by the Pakistani government as was her very close friend Saadat Hasan Manto. He went there, and it wasn’t a happy ending for him. She chose to stay back, and it was a struggle but she was always happy with her choice. For her, moving to Pakistan was out of the question.There are two biopics on Manto. The one by Sarmad Khoosat released in 2015, and the other by Nandita Das in 2018. Why don’t we have one on Ismat Apa yet? That’s because I still haven’t found people who are willing to fund it. In this day and age where everything is commercialised and star-driven, it is really hard to make a biopic.Speaking of lesbian representation in Indian storytelling, be it literature or cinema, one thinks immediately of Ismat Apa’s short story Lihaaf, and Deepa Mehta’s film Fire, based on it. How does it feel to inherit a legacy like this, and then to continue it instead of just patting yourself on the back and feeling good about being her grandson?I struggled with coming out, especially in the 1990s. It was a hostile environment. But on some level, I felt that, if my Nani, as a Muslim woman in the 1940s, could write a story like Lihaaf that referred to lesbianism, then there was no way that I could cheat that legacy. I think, very early on, I realised that I had to be true to her. So, I had to negotiate my own coming out. When Ismat Apa was around, we did not have the same kind of vocabulary that we now have for gender, sexuality, relationships, or the process of sharing about oneself with friends and family. India did not have queer collectives and pride marches back then. What did allyship or solidarity look like as you were growing up in that household?I need to give you some background about my childhood. I was a bit of a girly boy, so I would get teased and bullied. She would always tell me, “You are a different kind of boy, but you own it and live it. It will be hard but eventually you will be happy. If you don’t embrace your truth, you will have a very difficult life.” As a young person, I didn’t really understand that what she was talking about was my sexuality. But clearly, she could see that I was not fitting easily into what society expects of boys. But she made space for me in her home and her heart.Dhiren Borisa and Akhil Katyal’s critical essay ‘Caste Under the Quilt’, which was published by Queerbeat in 2024, looks at how English translations of the story have “systematically” watered down the Urdu original’s emphasis on the relationship between caste and desirability, even skipping caste slurs. What do you make of this reading? I started learning Urdu only in the last 10 years. Now that I have read my Nani’s work in the original, I can see how English translations have whitewashed the whole caste element. Because if you read the story in Urdu, there are very clear references to the fact that the two women – Begum Jaan and Rabbu – were from different socio-economic backgrounds. One was from a privileged upper class and upper caste background, while the other was clearly not.There are factions within the queer rights movement in India because the assertion of queer Dalit identity and queer Muslim identity is making a lot of people uncomfortable and insecure, especially if they are aligned with majoritarian ideologies that harm Dalits and Muslims. At such a time, how do we revisit and re-interpret Lihaaf? I believe that we must approach the story with an open mind and a liberal sort of outlook because here is an amazing story, which allows us to look at various layers of identity. There are many who think of it as an inclusive story. But I also know that it has been called out for certain problematic representations. And then there were people who criticized and abused my Nani till her dying day. She used to get hate mail. People would threaten to kill her for writing Lihaaf. She literally referred to Lihaaf as the proverbial stick that was used to beat her.Did readers also wonder if she had lovers who were women?Yes, I think there has been a lot of curiosity about her sexuality because she studied at an all-women’s institution called Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow, and in her autobiographical writing, she talks about admiring older girls and having crushes on them. People have read into that. Whether she had female lovers or not will just remain a mystery.Sometimes I wonder if people are reluctant to associate with ‘homosexuality’ because the term was invented in the late 1800s, and was used until recently in a medical or pathological context. But experiences and narratives of same-sex desire, attraction, flirting and romance have existed in Southasian cultures for centuries. While identifying with a sexual orientation can be empowering, can it also make people feel trapped in a label?Absolutely! I agree with you. I think people are sometimes hesitant to use labels because this creates problems for them. Pluralism is at the heart of our culture and history. In 1946, there was an obscenity trial in the Lahore High Court because Ismat Apa wrote Lihaaf, a story that people found offensive. Two years ago, the children’s imprint of Penguin India published Mamta Nainy and Barkha Lohia’s book Rebel with a Cause: How Ismat Chughtai Rewrote the Rules for Girls. What do you make of this? I see this as a sign of how the world has evolved. And it’s beautiful, isn’t it? Today, she is viewed with a different lens, so children too will get to read her story. Actually, I am working on a children’s book myself. It is a story about her childhood, my childhood with her, and how she inspired me in my career as a filmmaker. Thanks to her influence, I always felt that, if you are empowered enough to be able to create art, try to build a layer of social commentary into it. You have also made a documentary film called The Sailor and the Chef, which had its premiere at Kashish this year. How did you end up discovering these gay men who have been together for more than 30 years, and then making a film about them?Once I hit my 50s, I started becoming aware that, as a filmmaker, I had turned my spotlight on many different aspects of the LGBTQ community but I hadn’t looked at the older demographic, which was sort of invisibilised within an already marginalised group. So I began to meet older people from our community, and listen to their stories. That’s when I came across Piyush, who is the sailor in the title, and Sushil, who is the chef. Their story is really sweet. Both come from humble, middle class backgrounds. The film is about how they met by chance, created this relationship and a beautiful little world for themselves, came out to their families, and negotiated the prospect of marriage. I found it very inspiring. Piyush had a heart attack, and he was told to exercise. That’s when Sushil said, “Why don’t we begin dancing?” They enjoyed it so much that they started learning it formally, and now they perform at local community events for fun. They are called the Dancing Daddies. They bring a positive, uplifting energy to the film.Would it be fair to say that queer culture in India and, perhaps all over the world, tends to be youth-centric? And is this part of the reason behind making the film?Yes, completely! Apart from being youth-centric, queer culture can also be fascist on a lot of levels, especially in the gay community. It is all about how you look, and having a six pack, what labels you wear, and the kind of lifestyle you lead. There is a lot of shaming. You actually have people saying that those who are fat, femme or aged are not welcome.The sailor figure tends to be fetishised by gay men in cinema as well as pornography. While making The Sailor and the Chef, were you drawing on that history? I was thinking of Querelle, a film made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It is based on Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest about a Belgian sailor. I am a big admirer of Genet. Middle-class LGBTQ people often wait until they are financially secure to come out to their families and colleagues. But one also finds LGBTQ people born into class privilege and generational wealth who prefer to stay in the closet, and not use their voice and platform for the community. How did you figure out the right direction for yourself?Your question makes me think of my Nani, and also my childhood friend Riyad Wadia, the indie filmmaker who made BOMgAY (1996). We would have these discussions. Initially, I felt scared when I started working. I wanted to hide my queerness to become a film director because, in those times, there were no directors who were out as queer. But there were queer makeup artists, fashion designers and dancers. Queerness was relegated to specific occupations. I have had class privilege, and the privileges of caste and education, and I am also the product of a Hindu-Muslim marriage. We have all these different identities that come together. I feel good about making a film like Happy Hookers (2006) about male sex workers, and Coming Out Stories (2016), and being the series director for a six-episode Netflix documentary series called The Big Day (2021), which also featured a whole episode around a gay couple that got married.I am proud of Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s show Made in Heaven, which I acted in. It shows queer relationships in a sensitive way. And I’ve written stories that were published in anthologies like Minal Hajratwala’s Out! Stories from the New Queer India (2012), and Pawan Dhall’s Queer Potli: Memories, Imaginations and Re-imaginations of Urban Queer Spaces in India.I don’t know if I paid a price for coming out. Maybe I did. Perhaps I lost out on work. Most of my films are self-funded. But I’ll go to my grave a happy person. And that’s what matters to me. Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, educator and literary critic. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Borderlines: Volume 1 (2015), Clear Hold Build (2019), Fearless Love (2019), and Bent Book (2020). He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.