Now boys lock lips After girls, in Shaitan

TV actor Shiv Pandit was never prepared for his first on-screen kiss that he shared with a man in Anurag Kashyap’s Shaitan. He says if he were informed, he would have refused the role. “A lot of scenes were incorporated at the last minute,” he recalls, adding that the ‘truth-and-dare’ game was suddenly introduced during a scene. “We were just following our director Bejoy Nambiar’s instructions and playing along. If I had been informed, it would have stayed in my mind. Sudden incorporations like this kiss have made the film edgier.”

Fortunately, Kalki Koechlin and Kirti Kulhari’s kissing scene had set the mood for Shiv. “Out of nowhere, I was asked to kiss Neil. I did it and Bejoy called ‘Cut!’ It was over within seconds,” he adds, admitting that he instantly ran to the washroom to gargle and clean his mouth. “That took me a few minutes.”

When asked, the Bollywood debutant says that his friends and family have stood by him, without questioning or teasing him. 

“Thankfully, the response so far has been great from family and friends. But I must clear that this scene doesn’t reflect my personal opinion of same-sex relationships,” says Shiv, who’s also looking forward to his Tamil debut, Neelai, produced by V Ravichandran, the producer of Kamal Haasan’s Dashavataram.

Other guy kisses
John Abraham-Abhishek Bachchan in Dostana (2008)
Kapil Sharma-Yuvraj Parashar in Dunno Y… Na Jaane Kyun? (2010)

A restaurant patron and the chef in the Mainland China commercial