While having lunch I watched some program they had on one of the Hindi channels. The story, which is to create awareness & social commentary goes like this : A young man, late teens or perhaps 20-21 is gay and hides his sexuality from his family & friends. He is made fun of because he is shy. Lonely and desperate for love, he turns to the internet and, pretending to be a girl, he befriends a popular young man (on whom he has a crush) in the same city. The youngster uses his pretty sister’s photos to get his crush’s attention. The other guy has no idea that this is a male on the other end and shows himself to the boy via webcam. The boy refuses to activate his webcame, claiming that the cam is defective. Instead, after the man asks for a recorded video, he secretly video tapes his older sister – as she is dancing semi-clothed in the privacy of her bedroom.
The young man then uploads this video of his sister to the crush. The man is smitten by the good looks of the girl in the video. A couple of days later while the gay young man, his father & his sister are shopping at a mall, the man approaches the sister, recognizing her from the pics and the video and speaks to her. When she says she doesn’t recognize him, he thinks she is fooling him and gets angry. When the father intervenes, the man shows them the video of the sister, dancing semi-clothed and says “she sent this to me”.
The father is furious and slaps his daughter and drags her home and confines her to her room. Now this is a grown young woman, early 20s atleast. For the next few days the sister protests her innocence but her father is so angry that he refuses to speak to her and files a case with the cops to find out if someone else uploaded the video. The sister seeks solace with her brother but he is too ashamed to say anything.Finally the cybercell reveals that the IP address was traced to their house and the father is furious again and slaps his daughter a couple of times. The girl is devastated but then recalls that her brother is frequently on the web and catches him with her pics on his laptop. Beside herself with rage, she lashes out at him, hitting him and berating him for ruining her reputation and life and pushes him outside the house. As passerby watch, the boy confesses to his dad who also beats him a few times and then refuses to let him into the house.
The gay young man cries alone outside the house and sleeps out in the rain throughout the night. He then leaves the neighbourhood, writes an apology letter to his sister, asking for her forgiveness and then kills himself. At the end of the clip, the sister is seen addressing a crowd showing pics of her brother and begs people to be more understanding and accepting of people who are gay. She says that even though what her brother did was wrong, she must have been a bad older sister as he could never confide in her and if so she would have been there to support him. Instead he acted in a desperate manner seeking the love of a stranger hiding being a false identity. The narrated then goes on to tell a similar moral of the story.
What is however not mentioned is that the father could also have been a better father, allowing the son to open up about his sexuality. And also not beat up and lock up his daughter like she is a slave to him!
