Lavender (Hindi Series)

This web series is another release from Last Leaf Productions on its YouTube channel. A handful of Indian channels have tried making BL content before, but honestly, the direction and acting in those projects were pretty rough. So I genuinely respect the effort this production house is making to bring us stories about gay relationships in India, especially ones set in a major city like Mumbai. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a lavender marriage is a marriage between a gay man and a lesbian woman—or sometimes a straight woman—entered into purely to maintain appearances, with both people fully aware of what is really going on. That is the central premise of this show. There are 8 episodes, each running around 30-35 minutes.

Apu and Mohak are roommates in Mumbai who have secretly been a couple for several years, keeping their relationship hidden. Apu’s male cousin also lives with them and is, in fact, the owner of the flat. Mohak wants them to come out as a couple, but Apu isn’t ready to take that step. Things become uncomfortable when the cousin makes gay jokes around them, and Apu eventually decides to tell him the truth about their relationship. It goes very badly. The following day, Apu receives a call informing him that his father has been hospitalized. His sister was meant to marry into another family in a match that would have finalized a business merger, but she ran away before the wedding. Now, to save face and protect his father’s health, Apu’s father pressures him to marry the daughter of that same family instead. Apu meets Jiya and is honest with her, asking her to reject the marriage because he is gay and already in love with someone else. But Jiya is desperate to leave her small town and get away from her controlling father, so she begs Apu to marry her anyway, simply to help her escape, promising that she will respect his boundaries completely. Mohak is devastated when Apu returns home with a wife. Once the initial shock passes and Apu explains the situation, Mohak eventually accepts it. Meanwhile, Jiya is learning how to become independent and starts developing genuine feelings for Apu. She constantly teases Mohak about stealing Apu away, though it’s all playful, and she completely understands how deep Apu and Mohak’s love for each other really is. As time passes, however, Mohak begins to realize that his relationship with Apu will never receive the same social acceptance as Apu and Jiya’s marriage. After he and Jiya become genuinely close friends, he starts wondering whether he should leave their lives altogether. In an emotional finale, Apu finally reaches his limit, comes out to his father, and says that he no longer cares about the consequences because being with the person he loves matters more than anything else. As for Jiya’s future, perhaps that will be addressed in a later season.

I’ve encountered a few other stories in this space, and this one genuinely feels rooted in an Indian setting. The production values may be modest and low budget, but the heart and sincerity behind the project are clearly in the right place. You can really feel the bond between Mohak and Apu as a couple—the way they love each other, argue, and take care of one another. The one thing noticeably missing here, and honestly in other shows from this production house as well, is any real intimacy. I’m not asking for explicit sex scenes, but a few moments of genuine passion or kissing would have given the relationship much more weight and believability. I liked how gradually the characters develop over the course of the season. Apu and Mohak remain together despite the cousin’s disapproval, although his approval was never necessary in the first place. The sick father embodies exactly the conservative, small-town mindset you’d expect. Thankfully, the writers give Jiya’s character real strength. She understands perfectly what she is agreeing to and what is at stake. A lot of shows in this genre turn the wife figure into some sort of villain, but here she is more playful and mischievous. She even explains that this behavior comes from simply not having many friends of her own. The way she supports Mohak when his mother comes to visit really cements their friendship. I appreciated that the dynamic between the three of them develops gradually rather than changing overnight, because that makes everything feel much more believable. Overall, this is a genuinely solid effort and one that deserves applause. (6/10)