Rasbhari is not about sex education
Streaming services have done wonders to Indian art, cinema and tv series. Not only now there is a global audience for Indian content, but also the content is freed from the usual British era colonial institution called Censor board. Now the story writer or producer does not have to worry about a babu on powertrip before producing a series.
Of course Indian government's biggest problem is sex. It is almost as if Indians have procreated to 1.3B people using asexual reproduction our government wants to hide and erase any indication that people around us might be having sex. Streaming services have seen an explosion in content around sex and we see series adding some element of sex in seiries whose primary focus is not sex. For example Sacred Games had several sex scenes.
Rasbhari is an Amazon prime web series and its main focus is sex. The story revolves around the famous town of Merat. Merath is a historically significant town as it use to be a major army outpost during British era. It had several brothels and hungry men. The 1857's uprising against British East India company started in Merat.
Of course Rasbhari is a modern era series. It revolves around a teenager boy Nand who is friends with Priyanka. Everything in the town changes when a new teacher Shanu madam arrives in the town with her husband. Her husband has to leave town frequently for work and he is out for days. Shanu madam appears sexy to many people and news spreads pretty quickly that she is easy to get into bed. Those who have lived in small towns like this can relate to this phenomenon. There is always that hot married woman that all men fall for and all other fat married women hate. Shanu madam is precisely that. What americans call a MILF and what Indian netizens have immortalized as 'bhabhi'.
As a lover of this kind of comedies, I had high hopes form Rasbhari. I expected that Amazon must have seen how popular Savita Bhabhi was and decided to create a similar character to capture Indian imagination. I will say that Rasbhari is largely very dissapointing.
People think that sexual humor is simple. But it is not. Sex is a very personal matter in India, we all do it but we do not talk about it much. As a consequence in order to write a good story around it the writer has to be someone who has been there and done that. It is not a job for incels. You can not make things up using your imagination and then expect people to relate. Savita Bhabhi was popular for this very reason. It captured the common stereotypes of bra salesman and green rooms of beauty contests through eyes of people. Hence she got popular.
Rasbhari, fails on that respect. It has its moments. For example make out sessions cybercafes was a common thing during my youth. This series captures that pretty well but then also fails miserably to create the chemistry between Shanu madam and all her "victims".
Without givin you too many spoilers, entire town appears to have sex with Shanu madam and then talk about it. The women of the town are furious and plan to catch their husbands red handed. Our protagonists Nand on other hand observes this carefuly and hopes to break his virginity with Shanu madam. However he is unable to find any evidence of Shanu madam's nymphomania.
All this while Priyanka is head over heels on Nand. As a viewer we wonder why Nand who is obsessed with sex is unable to pick on the obvious signals of his teenage friend Priyanka but is rather navigating his way to Shanu madam's bedroom. At one point Priyanka is asking Nand advice on which bra she should be wearing and Nand would rather think about Shanu madam. This is beyond reason and sense.
It is hinted that Shanu madam's husband is aware of his wife's sexual adventures and has figured that she has multiple personality disorder or in other words, ghost of a prostitute from British era Merat is haunting Shanu madam. This gets very unbelieable at that point. Which husband will leave his wife alone despite knowing that she might inadvertantly end up having sex with his maid, cable guy and dozen other people ? This plot is probably written by an incel or a cuckold.
Despite these major plot holes the series is still enjoyable. Primarily because Nand, his father, his mother, Priyanka and Shanu madam display some exceptional acting. Nand's mother Pushpa is played by Neelu Kohli who gets full marks for her perfomance of a protective wife who will go to any extent to protect her husband from the "chudail". There are certain scenes that we all have lived. They are relatable and hence funny and enjoyable. But when you encounter some random scenes that are so ridiculous they break the flow. One example is of how Shanu' husband tells about his intimate sex life to Nand. It does not work like that.
Every town has stories. Every town has salacious scandals. Our teenage years are full of sexual adventures and fantasies. Milf fantasies are extremely common part of Indian pasyche and yet the cocktail that Amazon has delivered of all thees things simply fails to capture our imagination tha way a series like Panchayat did.
I will give this series 7/10.
Good parts:
- Some scenes are hilarious.
- Sex scenes are well done.
- Nilu Kohli's acting.
- Priyanka and Nand's teenage romance.
Bad Parts:
- Plot hole of Shanu's husband who is either cuckold or stupid.
- Nand and Shanu has no chemistry.