Hello Sunny Bunny

The inevitability of Hindi ‘porncom’

In an anthropologically profound moment in the film Ragini MMS 2, lead actress Sunny Leone moans in bed by herself. Gradually, the heaving and panting get louder as she fakes an orgasm, calling out a boy’s name before a large crew working on a film within the film.

Right before this, a TV actor—proud of having a stock expression for every emotion—takes potshots at Leone’s acting skills. Try doing what I just did if you think it’s easy, Leone tells the guy. It’s hard enough to have sex with someone you’ve barely met. Most would freeze if made to do it in a room full of gawking strangers as a camera films every move.

Leone is a porn star. The suffix ‘star’ distinguishes her from amateurs in porn videos who appear with titles like Girlfriend, MILF, Wife, Bhabi. Porn stars have a screen name and a following. They play themselves in every film. Leone’s genre is technically banned in India. But technology has made censorship redundant. Everybody knows Sunny Leone, even if they haven’t watched her major hits Female Gardener, Undress Me, Goddess…

Porn flicks—what we called ‘blue flims’ when cigarettes were ‘fags’—surely distort sex, turning human anatomy into over-sized auto parts and lovemaking mechanical. Still, they serve a strong social purpose, besides providing a healthy outlet for the older male’s sexual frustration. Every guy I know experienced sex for the first time through a porn film.

To cut the highfalutin crap about cinema, porn is the most important reason men have watched movies. (I don’t know about women. I suspect they are gifted with a nuanced, fanciful imagination.) More Indian sperm has been wasted on Pamela Anderson than would be needed to produce half the population of China. Several recipients of this flattery have followed—almost all with large breasts and fair skin.

Brown skin actors have been around on the porn scene since the beginning of low-speed internet on sites such as Desibaba. But the disgruntled look on those battered faces made it evident that the gaunt, uninterested female leads under dark light were being forced into the act. Such unaesthetic videos could appeal only to a closet rapist.

The few proper Indian porn stars now—Shanti Dynamite, Priya Anjali Rai, etcetera—are second or third generation immigrants in the US or UK. Leone was born Karenjit Kaur Vohra to a conservative Sikh family in Ontario. She didn’t inform her parents before joining the adult entertainment business. It’d be too tragic to know if her dad accidentally came across her videos during his ‘alone time’.

Leone was offered her Bollywood debut by producer Mahesh Bhatt, who has had the pulse of India’s lowest common denominator for a long time. Mahesh signed Leone while she was on the reality show Bigg Boss. She’s done a couple of thrillers since—the Bhatts’ ‘commercially average’ Jism 2, and the ‘flop’ Jackpot, directed by Kaizad Gustad, who introduced the British Katrina Turquotte (Kaif) to Bollywood.

I’m told Ragini MMS 2 is the first ‘universal’ hit of 2014, meaning a film with almost equal footfalls at metropolitan multiplexes and semi-urban single screens. The film stars newbies; Leone plays herself, making out with each male lead. Producer Ekta Kapoor, who has made a career of chronicling complex female kitchen politics, understands the simplicity of the male brain. This is the closest a Bollywood film has come to a proper Indian porn flick—with a lesbian kiss, shower sex, motorboating, skinny dipping…

Theatre audiences are known to giggle during sex scenes in Hindi films. In Ragini MMS 2, the film within the film is ‘horrex’ (horror+sex), but the film itself is ‘porncom’ (porn+comedy), with enough intentional humour to ensure the giggles are bereft of any guilt or discomfort. It was the same with sex-com Grand Masti last year, the double entendres of which actually had only one meaning. Since the genre was comedy, audiences openly laughed, though they went to see something else.

The late Vijay Anand was kicked out of the Censor Board in 2003 for suggesting there should be X-rated theatres in India. He needn’t have bothered. Bollywood finds it way.

About The Author

Mayank Shekhar

Mayank Shekhar runs the pop-culture website TheW14.com