For long homosexuals have largely been perceived as out of the orbit of the various formulas and permutations that control the Bollywood box office.

Years ago, Sanjeev Kumar did play an effeminate character in A. Bhim Singh's "Naya Din Nayee Raat" and so did Anupam Kher subsequently in Rahul Rawail's "Mast Kalander" and David Dhawan's "Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge".

But these were essentially comic characters meant to lampoon men who, in every day jargon, aren't "normal".

India's first bona fide homosexual film was Riyad Wadia's "Bomgays" in 1996. A 12-minute film adapting four of litterateur R. Raja Rao's poems to screen, it featured Rahul Bose.

Nine years later Bose still thinks homosexuality is a long way from gaining acceptability in Bollywood. "We hardly have any films on the theme. Nor do we respect the gay community's space in the way we show them on screen."

Mahesh Dattani's "Mango Souffle" was a recent effort to look at the gay community without prejudice. It made a valiant effort to de-marginalise homosexuality in our cinema. But the film hardly got itself an audience worth mentioning.

Now in Madhur Bhandarkar's "Page 3" for the first time a gay character is looked at without prejudice. Rehaan Engineer plays a gay costume designer who has a clandestine affair with the man whom the protagonist (Konkona Sensharma) loves.

In one sequence, after the gay character is beaten up by some gay-bashers, Rehaan asks Konkona: "Is it my fault if nature made me this way?"

On a lighter note, Konkona finds her gay friend ogling at a girl in a restaurant. "If she's so pretty can you imagine how good-looking her brother must be?" guffaws Rehaan.

"Page 3" comes closest in Indian cinema to depicting a gay character with some semblance of sensitivity.

Says its director Madhur Bhandarkar: "All the characters you see in 'Page 3' are based on people I know. In our films, gay characters are used as props and gimmicks. In my film, Rehaan plays an identifiable character. We cannot reduce any community of people to tokens and emblems. We've to treat them as real."

Hindi cinema is a long way off from pulling homosexuality out of the rut of 'minorityism'.

While no complete film on the theme of homosexuality has emerged from Bollywood, it took an Indian woman director, Deepa Mehta, to make a full film on the theme of lesbianism. "Fire" remains the single-most important film on the theme of homosexuality by an Indian director.

The rest of the filmmakers will just have to wait to get in touch with their own sexuality before they can get honest about the matter on screen.