Sridhar Rangayan | Gulabi Aaina (The Pink Mirror) / 2003, re-released 2006

four generations of gay love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sridhar Rangayan (screenwriter and director) गुलाबी आइना Gulabi Aaina (The Pink Mirror) / 2003, re-released 2006 [40 minutes]

 

Sridhar Rangayan is one of the best queer Indian directors of his generation, and in The Pink Mirror is has created a campy masterwork about two transsexuals—these are basically the Indian equivalent of drag queens, aware of their male sexuality and interested in boys; they are not transgendered women—Bibbo (Ramesh Menon) an older Bollywood fashion designer who is as campy as they get, and still occasionally dances, and Shabbo (Edwin Fernandes), who sees Bibbo, as her “mom,” but is a far more sensuous and seductive transsexual who seems to still find many gay men to seduce.

   Shabbo has taken on a young cute teenage gay boy, Mandy (Rishi Raj) who speaks primarily in English as her “assistant,” and when she visits her mentor Bibbo discovers that he has recently hired a drop-dead beautiful driver, Samir (Rufy Baqal) even though he doesn’t own a car. Samir, Bibbo explains, has the car to which he drives Bibbo to events where the elder designer might introduce him to film directors, since Samir clearly sees himself as a future film star.

     The two “women” mostly bitch and gossip together when not making up their faces, Bibbo having just recovered from a facial plaster that turned his face bright blue. They argue and even fight, particularly when right in front of him Shabbo attempts to seduce his beautiful driver.

      Yet these two are fast friends, and when Shabbo quickly is seen keeping a secret envelope in her purse, Bibbo takes the opportunity while she is downstairs mixing drinks with Samir, to peek into her purse, finding there a letter from her doctor diagnosing that she is HIV-positive.

      The shock is immediate as tears come into his eyes. And later when the two argue about Shabbo’s attempt to seduce Samir, he finally challenges her for not revealing her condition.

        The two have long been arguing about which event to attend, a party of older men to which Bibbo has been invited, who might be useful to Samir’s career ideals, or to a party of younger men at which Shabbo has been asked to dance.

        The sad revelation changes their plans, as Bibbo gives into Shabbo and the two together dance in a wonderful sequence before a group of basically straight young men who love their performances.

        Meanwhile, behind their backs, young Mandy, immediately wowed by Samir’s beauty, has been doing everything possible to himself seduce Samir, mostly through an infectious giggle and, when asked to clean up some spilled makeup powder, through the motions of his anxious butt.

        The women agree that both of them performed brilliantly before the boys. And Mandy announces that Samir has invited him out on a date. True order has momentarily been restored in comedic terms, even if we know the future provides the elder dancers only sadness and tragedy.

        When this movie was first released in India in 2003, the Central Board of Film Certification banned the film, the censor board citing it as “vulgar and offensive.” Rangayan appealed twice but was rejected, and the film still remains banned in India, despite the fact that it was shown in film festivals around the world, winning awards on at least two occasions. Rangayan went on to direct at least two other major LGBTQ+ films, Breaking Free in 2015, a documentary about Indian gay rights, and Evening Shadows (2018) both of which I review in these My Queer Cinema volumes.

 

Los Angeles, May 9, 2026 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).