Its my life - A south Asian Queer Story in America A Film by Sarav Chithambaram held its Boston Premiere at the Little Kresgee Auditorium at MIT in Dec 4 2008.

"Many years ago a young man in India tried to commit suicide since he had no way to come to terms with his sexuality. Fortunately his attempt was unsuccessful and he then decided to do something so that no other young man would ever be in this situation. That young man was me  and this is my attempt at keeping my word to do things to help South Asians GLBT community" said Sarav Chitambaram as he introduced his documentary  to the audience.

 In his documentary ,Sarav  creates a dialogue between Gay and Straight South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Srilankan and more) community in USA. This is an attempt to create a positive visibility of the South Asian GLBT community and exposing many of the issues faced by them culturally at home and far from home. The GLBT Community has unique challenges as a Minority within the Minority community and also face many of the same issues the South Asian community in general faces in the states as a minority community. Some of the issues the documentary deals with are Homophobia, Gender bias, Racism, Classism etc.

Being a Bharatanatyam artist, it was very appropriate that Sarav opened with a Bharatanatyam performance by Gayathri Arumugam. There was also another contemporary dance performance that touched on the GLBT theme.

The documentary opens in the Berkshires, Sarav's first home in the US where he began to attend group meetings that were tailored to help people come out. Mr. Mike Connors, coming out group facilitator and teacher was one of the first interviewees. "I was really very unsure of how to help Sarav for he was the first South Asian gay to attend our group. I knew very little about South Asian culture. Slowly I began to learn more about the culture through Sarav and I began to understand the complicated issue of being a South Asian Gay"

The film features Rita Shah - President of IAGB, Ranjani Saigal - Founder of Lokvani.com, Tara Deshpande - Bollywood Actress, Kishor Kumar - South Asian Gay Artist and Activist, Kannan - South Asian Gay Activist,Engineer, Dr. Suriya - South Asian Gay Activist,Imtiyaaz Hussein- Founding member of MASALA and gay activitist, Mike Connors - Coming out group facilitator, BSCC member and teacher, Deen - South Asian Transgender Artist, Dale Tucker musician and friend of South Asians, Dolores Tucker - friend of South Asians.

Each person brought their own perspective to the film. Rita Shah and Ranjani Saigal  felt that it was important to create a safe space for dialogue between gay and straight members of the community so that there is a better understanding of the issues from both sides.  Tara Deshpande felt really comitted to cause of bringing positive visibility to the South Asian gay community and even went so far to say that if her child was gay she would not mind "arranging" to find a suitable partner for them.

"Arranged marriage system is a big problem for South Asian gays" said Kishor Kumar. "People often are forced into a marriage leading to a lot of pain and suffering for all concerned" On a lighter note Gay activist Kannan suggested arranged gay marriage as a good thing for South Asians.
The film also dealt with racism in the gay community.

After the presentation there was a open question answer session. The audience was all in praise for this excellent presentation and had suggestions on how to take this amateur production to the next level. Sarav discussed the difficulties he faced in creating the documentary. It was his first attempt at a film a lot of trial and error went to creation of the work. He also said that getting people on screen was not easy.  While he found the women in the straight South Asian community very supportive and willing to speak he was unable to get men in the straight South Asian community to feature in his film.

As next steps, he would like to find funding to create a more professional documentary which he hopes he can share widely so as create a better understanding of the world of GLBT South Asians. A special mention must be made of the wonderful selection of the music used in the film.  Kishor Kumar, Dale Tucker, Kannan, David Meiri, Sarav must be congratulated for picking an eclectic collection of music ranging from Carnatic classical to western contemporary.

To learn more about the film please check out Sarav's site.

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