What do a popular, heritage tea brand of more than a century and a six-member transgender band have in common? Together, they are forcing India to confront its prejudices towards the trans community.
In a historic move, 113-year-old Brooke Bond Red Label tea partnered with Mindshare Mumbai and Y-Films to create the country’s first transgender band, catapulting the project into the international spotlight.
The resulting advertising campaign for the household name tea brand went viral in India and abroad. It garnered support from some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry and won the Glass Lion award at Cannes for culture-shifting creativity that promotes gender equality and debunks stereotypes.
In India, this community has been hugely marginalised, not only by society but often also by their own families. Despite there being roughly 1.9 million transgender people in the country, many struggle to find stable employment or acceptance and often belong to the lowest economic class. But 6 Pack Band have sparked a positive conversation around a community that is often relegated to the shadows.
“In India, our interaction with transgender people is typically at a traffic light, where we tend to roll up the window the minute we see them approaching,” says Ashish Patil, Business and Creative Head and Vice-President for Youth Films, Brand Partnerships and Talent Management at Yash Raj Films. “We felt it was important to get a conversation started.”
He says conceptualising and selling the idea internally at Y-Films was easy, but actually executing it was “a whole new ball game”. “There’s no Indian Idol for transgender people, [and] you can’t really put out a Facebook post asking people to come for auditions. Even traditional casting directors and model coordinators had no idea where to start on something like this. So finding and casting the band came with its own set of challenges.”
Of the six band members, Bhavika Patil has had the most exposure through small roles on TV shows, while Fida Khan has worked with the Humsafar Trust, an umbrella NGO for LGBT rights. Ravina Jagtap, Komal Jagtap, Asha Jagtap and Chandrika Suvarnakar live in Kalyan, Mumbai, and earn a living by going for births, celebrations, etc, where they love singing and dancing the lavani and popular Bollywood songs.
And Bollywood has rallied behind them. Singer Sonu Nigam came on board to mentor the band, heart-throbs Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan and Arjun Kapoor appear in videos with them, and Anushka Sharma voices both the opening and closing videos. Legend Asha Bhosle supported the band and her granddaughter Zanai sings with them. 6 Pack Band even got the nod from Salman Khan-starrer Sultan.
In less than a week, 6 Pack Band’s first single, Hum Hain Happy — a cover of Pharrell Williams’ chart-topper Happy — had clocked more than 1.4 million views on YouTube.
“There are some things we do, not because it gets us revenue or ratings or recognition — it doesn’t! — but because it’s the right thing to do,” says Patil. “This was our attempt to bring them into the mainstream and to really try and make our world a bit more tolerant and welcoming, which is so needed.”
