ESSAY: Kiss And Tell

LOVE AND LUST IN BOLLYWOOD

I was on the edge of my seat while watching Kites yesterday. In my naiveté I presumed this would be the day Bollywood would consummate love on screen. After all, the setting was perfect. The hero is an American citizen with no 'maa', 'pitaaji' or 'khandaan ki izzat' to hold him back (although men aren't generally weighed down by 'izzat', it's the woman's department to shoulder that). The heroine is Mexican and in America to marry her way to riches. Then, as a bonus, they're already legally wedded -- he as 'groom for hire', she for American citizenship -- in an arrangement of convenience, but by Hindi film conventions, at least they're married. They're both terribly handsome, can only look at each other's eyes and bodies and feast, because they don't speak the same language and hence their so-called romance must hinge on lust alone. Now you think shackles that have bound Hindi film lovers behind an invisible 'purdah' for decades will be broken forever.

They're on a terrace overlooking the dazzling lights of Vegas. They drink champagne. They smile. They dance in the rain. They hug (from the little I've seen of Spanish cinema, their tradition isn't to reach out to hug people they love, but head straight for the lips). They take inordinately long to get down to a limp kiss. But a lip-lock nonetheless. Intercut with their Mexican wedding (a traditional one, of course) are a few shots of bare bodies filmed aesthetically. And thus, in our collective imagination, their love finds fruition.

Throughout the affair, the character Barbara Mori plays keeps telling Hrithik Roshan's Jay, "we (will) make many babies," with as much feeling as she can convey in broken English. When I was growing up on an almost unhealthy diet of Hindi cinema, I actually believed that's how babies were made. And for an embarrassingly long time too! Couples get wet in the rain, look at each other suggestively, they hug, there's allusion to a kiss (two flowers hitting on each other with happy music in background), and bingo, a baby is born. The image of Rajesh Khanna (bare-chested and looking unintentionally lustful) and demure Sharmila Tagore sitting on either side of a bonfire in Shakti Samanta's Aradhana in the song "Roop tera mastana" is permanently etched in memory. In Abhimaan, the newly married Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri playfully negotiated a kiss -- never actually seen. He puts a finger to his lips, she blushes, he pulls her towards him and Hrishikesh Mukherjee covers the screen with the back of Bhaduri's head.

Bachchan and Parveen Babi sat naked in bed in Yash Chopra's Deewaar and shared a cigarette together, but they weren't talking about love or lust, just his existential angst. In Silsila, he wrapped Rekha around himself in the most rose-tinted version of eroticism seen on the Hindi screen. But the emphasis continued to be on the 'purity' of love, not its actual manifestation in sex. It would be a while before I'd get the full import of the song "Tere bina jeeya jaaye na" from Ghar, a rare expression of a woman's sexuality on screen, and appropriately, filmed on the sensual Rekha. Then Bachchan and Smita Patil sang "Jaane kaise kab aur kahan", chased each other around Ooty's lush landscape, jumped into the lake, did the bonfire routine (this time the suggestion of naked bodies was bolder) and in the next scene, Smita Patil was pregnant. Get the picture?

Imagine the confusion of a child growing up in an ultra-sanitised environment and an all-girls school when satellite television and internet were still a distant dream, Mills & Boons romances hadn't yet been discovered (not they offered much fodder to the imagination), comic books were about superheroes who wore underpants over a full body suit, and Hindi cinema was the only window to the adult world. I recall watching Shekhar Kapur's Masoom as a 10-year-old and wondering why Shabana Azmi was so angry with Naseeruddin Shah for making such a beautiful baby as Jugal Hansraj with another woman. I loved the film nevertheless. And then sitting up late into the night to watch Arth on Doordarshan (on the sly, of course). Smita Patil and Kulbhushan Kharbanda were shot in silhouette, their bare bodies doing something in the dark that provoked them to giggle a lot. The rest was left to my inadequate imagination. I was just into my teens and still clueless!

I cannot remember the exact turning point in my evolution. But by the time I watched Gulzar's Ijaazat and Naseeruddin Shah (awkwardly) told Rekha about his relationship with Anuradha Patel in typical Hindi film style alluding to sex by saying "Bas humne shaadi nahin ki, par hum saath saath rahe hain, ek saath," I knew exactly what he meant.

Comments

[Zee@ye]

Going by your notes, it looks like you have been waiting forever to see Bollywood cross the final frontier... :) It looks like its going to be a while though. Moral Police, Critics & the desperate audience don't seem to have their minds synchronized as yet

I must say that your views offer me a refreshing perspective to Cinema !!

[bollycrit]

have u seen Astha (starring rekha)? its an incredibly bold film, albeit some what non mainstream and A rated.

[Deepa Deosthalee]

I have watched Aastha. But it wasn't a mainstream film. This article refers to the squeamish attitude commercial Hindi cinema has towards sex. Besides, Aastha was a terrible film!