Dinesh Raheja column: Badhai Ho, sexual attitudes have changed

Dinesh Raheja column: Badhai Ho, sexual attitudes have changed

Dinesh RahejaUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 04:04 AM IST
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I finally caught up with the film that has caught everyone’s imagination —Badhai Ho. Played largely for laughs, the film shows the huge hue and cry that ensues when a middle-aged mother of two (Neena Gupta) finds herself inadvertently pregnant. Even her elder son (Ayushmann Khurrana) finds it difficult to come to terms with what his fiancee pithily points out — his parents have sex! Neena receives taunts galore and becomes the butt of ridicule when she attends her nephew’s marriage. Eventually, however, her immediate family rallies around her and her most caustic critic (mother-in-law, Surekha Sikri) becomes her staunchest supporter.

I found myself wryly amused during the movie — not so much at the on-screen antics but at the huge paradigm shift in Hindi cinema! This film spoke of the plight of a pregnant married (!) woman while I have grown up watching countless Hindi films earlier which dealt with the travails and tragedies of pregnant unmarried women! For decades, premarital sex had to be punished onscreen with insta-pregnancy and much grief for the ‘fallen angels’ (in most cases, the men got off lighter). This was true from Mala Sinha of ‘Dhool Ka Phool’ in the 1950s to Sharmila Tagore and Sadhana of ‘Aradhana’ and ‘Ek Phool Do Mali’ in the 1960s to Laxmi of Julie in the 1970s to Mandakini of ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’ in the 1980s. Unwed motherhood and subsequent social ostracism was the punishment meted out to those single ladies who dared to submit to their physical desires.

Today, however, unmarried pregnancy is no longer the hot-button cinematic issue it was once. This set me thinking. Contemporary leading ladies can be sexually adventurous if the role demands it … without it being scripted as a transgression that she has to pay a price for. In ‘Veere Di Wedding’ (2018), both Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor are single and sexually active but there are no pregnancy complications. In ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ (2016), Ranbir Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai have a vigorously physical relationship but the film treats it as a matter of fact and the writer looks for plot drivers elsewhere. In ‘Finding Fanny’ (2015), Deepika Padukone initiates sex with a befuddled Arjun Kapoor and there’s no mention of the stork paying a visit.

Post-millennial cinema has the work-obsessed heroine (Anushka Sharma) of ‘Band Baaja Baraat’ (2010) enjoying a long night of lovemaking with her colleague (Ranveer Singh) without getting pregnant and without any misgivings. The film’s story does not prosecute her for this deed, instead, it pushes her relationship to the next level. Two years later, in Jab Tak Hai Jaan, the same Anushka Sharma perkily asserts to Shah Rukh that she wants to travel around the globe “aur alag alag accent ke bandon ke saath sex karna hai.”

Female characters in contemporaneous films have sex as a natural part of the love-and-romance package. Alia Bhatt in ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’ pragmatically moves on from one month of flirtation and sexcapades with leading man Varun Dhawan and prepares for her arranged marriage with an NRI chosen by her father. She has no complications resulting from her indulgence. In 2 States, Alia plays an IIM grad, who enjoys an unabashedly physical relationship with her boyfriend played by Arjun Kapoor even before the marriage question is popped.  Hello Ananya?” Krish calls his Chennai-based girlfriend from Delhi. “Phone sex?” she repartees saucily.

In fact, today’s films audaciously mock the depiction of remorse and regret in the morning after the lovemaking that was the staple of films from the ’50s and ’60s and even ’90s. In ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ (1995), when an inadvertently drunk Kajol wakes up to find herself in Shah Rukh Khan’s bed, she bursts into hysterical sobs much to SRK’s amusement. However, 20 years later, in ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’, when a voluntarily drunk Alia Bhatt wakes up to a replay of the ‘DDLJ’ scenario, she barely turns a hair!

The lyrics to seduction songs have tellingly morphed from ‘Nahin nahin abhi nahin, abhi karo intezaar … chhodo na’ in ‘Jawani Diwani’ (Randhir Kapoor and Jaya Bhaduri)  to  ‘Bistar yeh tera mera jung ka maidan hai, jo tu trigger dabaye toh main chumme chalaoo…’ in Goliyon Ki Rasleela’ Ram Leela’ (Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone). The female lead in new Hindi films no longer feels the need to negate, underplay or hide her sexuality like she has done for decades.

Much has been done to level the gender divide and now it looks like the liberalism is encompassing an older generation with ‘Badhai Ho’, which at least acknowledges senior sexuality. The ‘Chhodo bachhe dekh rahe hain’ cliche is already dead. And what might help its quick burial is the fact that most of our saleable stars are over the half-century mark and continue to play romantic leads. Ageism is the next bastion to fall in the cinematic sexual revolution.

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