What is really interesting about Siras is his visible discomfort at being labelled ‘gay’; he’d rather not be labelled anything at all. That discomfiture tells us much more about him than anything else: he is of a generation which doesn’t go around sticking convenient bumper-stickers on people; for him they are just people, whether they dance, giving vent to their longing, in all-stag parties( one of the film’s most astonishingly poignant sequences), or whether they barge into his bedroom, video camera at the ready.
Manoj Bajpayee makes of Siras a man whose bewildered fragility is up for examination, and whose gentleness demands understanding and compassion. There are initial moments where you can see Bajpayee trying. And then he becomes Siras, greying hair curling at the temples, a worn suit to be donned when out of the house, an old blanket draped around the shoulders when home, fingers carving notes in the air as Lata’s voice fills his shabby living room. It is a fine performance, quiet and affecting.
