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What Do Paise ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane ki Baarish Tells Us About Chosen Families

Since its initial release in May 2009 and later re-release on Netflix in 2019, Do Paise ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane ki Baarish has remained largely overlooked, even with its availability on a major streaming platform. Starring Rajit Kapur as Debu, Munisha Koirala as Juhi, and Sanjay Naval as Kaku, Deepti Naval's directorial debut was an attempt at alternate cinema enchanted with unconventional themes and unsettling portrayals of queerness, desire, and family. 


Three people, Debu, Juhi, and Kaku, smile in separate, arched frames. The background is textured gray, and their expressions convey happiness. Do Paise ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane ki Baarish
Illustration by Sanigdhaya Mahajan

The film’s lack of viewership might be explained by the sort of unconventional subject it dares to explore, or rather, the space given to such narratives within media. Undoubtedly, a society so entrenched in the shackles of heteronormativity and queerphobia—where rigid templates dictate how stories ought to be told—will find it perhaps unsettling to land upon such a movie described as “When a sex worker hires a gay songwriter to care for her disabled son, the ensuing bonds that form offer a complex portrayal of love and family”?


Debu, a homosexual man and lyricist by profession, meets Juhi who is a single mother and a sex worker by profession, after he is dumped by his boyfriend. Throughout the storyline, Debu is shown to have been waging a war against the raunchy Bollywood songs catering primarily to the male gaze and consisting of objectifying lyrics towards women. In resistance, he is shown to be a songwriter with a penchant for poetic and meaningful lyrics. Interestingly, the film relies on a lot of nostalgia for retro Bollywood songs and has recurrently made use of them too. We also find a lot of references to retro bollywood names like Guru Dutt, Gulzar, Kaifi Azmi, and Dev Anand. 


In search of employment and shelter, Debu requests Juhi to let him work as a caretaker for her disabled son, Kaku. After it works out, we begin to witness the formation of an imminent platonic family, a type of bond that is rendered impossible to be understood from a hetero-patriarchal lens of the heterosexual/nuclear family unit. In essence, such a categorisation cannot be used to understand the kind of non-normative bond these three form—however, the relationships begin to take shape not within a fairytale arc but rather are situated in the struggles and negotiations through which they eventually actualise into a shared world of love, care, and desire.


Stigma, Sex Work, Stereotype


All three characters—Debu, Juhi, and Kaku—inhabit identities that remain marginalised in present-day society. From a distinctly queer perspective, the film could be heavily criticized for seemingly relying on stereotypical portrayals of both Juhi as a sex worker and Debu as a homosexual man. However, there’s more to examine in these outwardly conventional depictions.


Juhi is portrayed in the clichéd image of a sex worker—dressed in a glittery red saree, bright red lipstick, and makeup that is deliberately loud and prominent, all come to crystallize her identity in the public sphere. In one instance, when she mistakenly enters a five-star hotel to meet a client, the security guard, upon noticing her perceived “sex-worker dress-up,” denies her entry, remarking how everyone else is allowed inside except her. Later in the film, Debu takes it upon himself to “raise” Juhi’s standard, replacing her red saree with a more subdued one, switching her bright lipstick for a neutral shade, and toning down her makeup. When he brings her to the same hotel again, the security guards welcome her in without hesitation, perhaps a motif for the constant surveillance of bodies and the policing of morality.


This sequence suggests that the film is not merely representing stereotypes and discrimination but is rather using them consciously to critique the intersectionality of class, gender, and the construction of perceived respectability within the public. Instead of deploying these markers in a way that may seem socially ignorant or flat, the film appears to deliberately showcase how appearances and sartorial choices are often tied to class and gender, mediating access and exclusion within such public and elite spaces.


The film simultaneously engages with the question of sex work through Juhi’s character, revealing a number of complexities and endured hardships. An instance where one of Juhi’s regular customers insists on not using a condom, citing the need for her enjoyment too, she asserts that this work is not for her enjoyment but rather for money. In other such instances too, she is seen to be angrily lamenting about having to choose the profession out of circumstantial compulsion to make ends meet after her husband abandoned her and her disabled child. Later, the struggles of being a sex worker are loudly depicted as a group of men leave without paying her, men rejecting her for girls as young as 16 years of age, and her exchange with Sallu—the pimp she has worked with until now.


Such depictions and symbolic portrayals acquaint one with the nature of sex work itself. While she is not characterised as a passive victim of sex trafficking through force, her story still talks about the kind of exploitation that comes inherent to the sex work industry. Her assertion that it was never her free choice to be here and that she has no enjoyment to extract from this work beyond a dire need to sustain her family makes up for a broader commentary on how sex work often lacks true consent when the choice is between starvation and survival through sex. 


Radical feminist thinkers like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have argued how consent is replaced by monetary exchange in the sex work industry. Moreover, it is often through systematic coercion born out of poverty, marginalisation, and sometimes direct enforcement that sustains the industry. The very nature of sex work being that of the commodification of women’s bodies and sexual labour in the service of male entitlement, makes it intrinsically exploitative. 


In the context of a social milieu where sex work is popularly perceived as moral failure, whilst the sex workers continue to face marginalisation from state, society and violence at the hands of men, Juhi’s character emerges as nuanced—sufficing to fall neither in the pit of romanticisation of sex work, nor vilification. 


Of Queerness, Ahead, and Beyond Present 


Published in 2009 as well, Josè Esteban Muñoz’s ‘Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity’ has talked about queerness not as a matter of identity but as a state of imagining and inhabiting ways of living that go beyond and against the present state of things. He suggests that queerness is something that propels us onward from the toiling of the present, something “that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” The way the relationships of Debu, Juhi, and Kaku develop can be read through such a framework of defying the ‘here and now’ and fostering the ability to think of the “then and there”—or in simpler words, imagining a future in defiance of today's agonizing reality. 


Eventually, the kind of family that is shared by the three characters stems from a mutual share of love for each other, despite sharing no blood ties. Debu cares for and cherishes Kaku beyond just as his hired caretaker, to the extent that when Kaku utters ‘Maa’ (mother) for the first time, he points at Debu and not towards Juhi, his biological mother.  


Debu's relationship with Juhi is rooted in deep emotional intimacy. His bond with her is defined by platonic care, allowing him to offer unwavering support and companionship without the complexities of romantic entanglement. Their evolving relationship highlights the formation of a chosen family, built on understanding, respect, and shared experiences, rather than traditional frameworks familial units.


However, as previously mentioned, this does not occur instantaneously or without imperfections. To reach this level of mutual care, Juhi and Debu went through a considerable time of recurring conflicts and struggle in understanding one another. While seemingly accepting Debu’s homosexuality, Juhi ultimately fails to understand it. She periodically makes sexual advances on Debu, believing his sexuality stems from a lack of sexual experience with women. Unsurprisingly, Debu expresses his discomfort and makes it clear that he does not welcome her actions. 


The emotional tension culminates when Juhi attempts to initiate intimacy with Debu hoping to awaken his ‘heterosexual desires’ and help him move on from his boyfriend. Unable to do so, Debu is left naked and frozen, crying on the bed. After Debu leaves as a result of the incident, Juhi comes to recognize the gravity of her actions and finally begins to understand Debu's sexuality. Nevertheless, in the end, he returns and chooses to stay with her and Kaku. This portrayal of conflicts and struggles being simultaneous to the trio growing closer to each other enriches the realism of the film instead of merely being a product of fiction.


It was only in 2018 that the Supreme Court of India decriminalised homsexuality by overturning Section 377. Set in 2009, the film was released at a time when homosexuality was still criminalised in India under the continuation of the age-old colonial-era law. In such a context, the portrayal of a non-normative kinship consisting of varyingly stigmatised identities becomes a beautiful example of what Josè Muñoz would have called the queer aesthetics as media representation that “frequently contains blueprints and sche-mata of a forward-dawning futurity.” Certainly because such representations indicated acceptances and social conditions that were not here yet, but existed in marginalized realities and lived experiences. 


Under Today's Siege on Love 


Today, despite the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Indian state fails to acknowledge the existence of queer identities and their defiant kinships as is evident in the continued struggle for marriage equality and recognition of queer realities. It was only after the Section 377 verdict that Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane ki Baarish was re-released on Netflix. 


In the current state of the world, threats to self-determination and liberty are escalating. The push for a country-wide Uniform Civil Code in India and the recent developments concerning the enactment of Uniform Civil Code of Uttrakhand, 2024, have demonstrated that there's an accelerating onslaught on personal freedom and right to privacy. 


For instance, the Uttarakhand UCC mandates a registration of all live-in relationships with a failure attracting a fine and three month jail term. Here, the state can easily reject an application without any solid ground and the registrar retains the right to summon any of the party whenever it likes. It even allows a third-party to register a complaint of a man and woman residing together for more than one-month. The provision means that a pair simply living together would be required to legally prove they are not in a relationship if someone challenges their cohabitation. 


Worse, the code further mandates a certification from a religious leader, community head or an official from the concerned religious body stating that the customs governing the registrants of the application, allow a marriage between the two individuals willing to live together. Unsurprisingly, the code has no recognition of queer people or their families. 


In a time when when even consensual heterosexual relationships are under attack from the regressive forces thriving over the country, and democratic rights like privacy and freedom continue to shrink, Deepti Naval’s film—which gestures toward a futurity that is not dictated by the state-sanctioned norms of intimacy or moralistic scripts of respectability—stands out as more pertinent than ever. 


Even as constitutional rights are clawed back and dissent is silenced, the rain in this film continues to fall offbeat—on chosen families, on impossible kinships, on those who, despite everything, continue to love, live, and dream.




Edited by the Pandora Editorial Team


Vansh Yadav is a student of Sociology at Ambedkar University, Delhi, and a columnist at Political Pandora. His areas of research interests include history, fascism, urban studies, and caste.



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Keywords: Do Paise Ki Dhoop Chaar Aane Ki Baarish Review, Deepti Naval Directorial Debut, Indian Queer Cinema, Representation of Chosen Families in Cinema, Bollywood Films About Sex Work, LGBTQ+ Films India, Queer Narratives in Indian Films, Sex Work Portrayal in Bollywood, Unconventional Bollywood Movies, Indian Movies Challenging Heteronormativity

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