Why Vidya ki jawani has fired up urbane India

It was quite a startling experience to watch the morning show of The Dirty Picturein one of the PVRs the other day. It was for the second time I was watching the film but the first time in a cinema hall. Being the film critic for my newspaper, I am a regular at morning shows on Friday but have never experienced anything like what I did in The Dirty Picture.

It was like watching those morning shows of all those years ago in halls like Regal, Sheila and Rivoli, to name a few in Connaught Place. Something titled Kamsin Jawani or Bheega Yauwan or something even more titillating for your carnal senses. But unlike those morning shows of yore, where the only stiff thing one came across was shady men’s shoulders, not to mention the creepy silence of the audiences, the morning show of The Dirty Picture was noisy, raunchy and, well,paisa vasool.

The lewd comments about Vidya Balan’s rather heavy bosom were more titillating than the chatter that was coming from her mouth. The coins were falling all over the place, the men in the audience were quite a mouthful and the women next to them were having all the fun listening to them. Balan should have been there to see how much of a storm she has created among the so-called elite multiplex goers.

Actually, it is PVR’s masterstroke to price the shows till 1 pm at, well, a titillating Rs 50 each with combos costing not more than Rs 50. So in just Rs 100 you get to see a movie and have all the corn. The highly priced tickets were returning empty halls but now most morning shows are sold out. PVR gets to still make money and the audiences are laughing all the way to their slim pockets.

And, if in such a win-win situation, a bold movie rolls out on the big screen, there is no stopping the audiences. For one, the youth comes in, skirting the no entry in school uniform norm with a veteran’s ease. Take this boy from a nearby school. He was there with his friend for the 9 am show. He has changed his clothes, removed his school tie but was still in his school trousers which the man at the gate would not allow. A whole lot of cajoling, even a hush-hush bid to bribe the security guard failed. Dejected, the trio trailed off. But these were no quitters and soon they were back. This time, the boy was in a pair of shorts which he may have just bought from the neighbouring Adidas shop! The three went in gleefully, graced the front seats of the audi and, yes, you guessed it right — the most vociferous paisa-phenk section of the audiences!

The kind of buzz Balan’s show has created, that too among the more polished of the audiences confirms the fact that nothing sells more than sex, and if it through the raunchiness of an established actress like Balan, the majaa is to the power of 100! This was no front-benchers having fun. The lewd comments (most of them unprintable) came even from the premier class watchers, almost all of them — if they were not part of the comments brigade, they were contributing with applaud and laughter around those comments.

The film which is actually based on the poignant life and time of South Indian item number Silk Smitha does have pathos in it, but that’s decoded only by the more discerning among the audiences, which I must say were few and far between. It is to Balan’s credit that she fired up the nether minds of an entire population with such elan. Her character is as unapologetic as is the director, Millind Luthria of this bold but beautiful movie. He has played to the gallery and so has the dialogue writer.

But all that has been much written about. What the makers of The Dirty Picture have exposed is the fact that be it urban or semi-rural, small town or big cities, there are very few stiff upper lips left in our population. In this particular morning show, it was houseful not for Silk’s pathetic life but for the Dada Konde moments it came wrapped it. That Balan will surely go on to take the Best Actress Award for this role will also prove that sexually explicit films can also do the chic round if they are presented from the right platform, in this case by an established actress of repute.

There has hardly been any negative or outraged response to this film. The critics are fawning over the picture, actress, director and the screenplay — all of whom worked hard to heave the bosom and the dirty talk without any fig leaf.

That all this kitsch was lapped up in such a big way tells you how as a population we are innately voyeuristic and this time we are not in a mood to apologise for it, feel guilty or even hide our midriffs into our shoulders — the way we did while seeing Behekti Jawani! And as we come out of the closet as blatant beings, the film has made Rs 50 crore in a matter of a week, perhaps most of it coming through the morning show sellouts it has managed. That’s the new story of film-viewers of the so-called urbane India!

Published in Sunday Pioneer, 11 December, 2011