To child sexual abuse activists, he was just a predator who had it coming. Hansal Mehta’s unwatchable Aligarh had to airbrush the old, slow-moving and unbecoming Siras into the palatable and hot Manoj Bajpayee and make the sordid sex between two older men (the second being a poor and middle-aged Muslim rikshawala) into hot sex between a hottie and a hipster.
The older gay man was, and remains, a central source of exploitation, ridicule and murder (as with the not too distant murder of the 57-year-old banker from Besant Nagar in Chennai by four young boys), but is now the source of open ridicule. This is not to romanticise any earlier moment.
