Rasbhari, a juicy show (pardon my wordplay), is best watch right now as due to the pandemic all the shady theatres in the town are closed for now. Yet, it offers you the same experience; you just have to look for a dark place in your house and voila!
Note: There are no spoilers ahead.
Grab something to eat while I try to persuade you to refrain from watching it unless you have nothing better to do.
While a section of the population is grappling with anxieties and whatnot, there is a section of the population which are least spoken about: people like me, who love to watch adult drama once in a while for a chance to satiate our sexually repressed souls; isn’t it obvious?
Rasbhari, set in a small town milieu of Meerut, is a poor attempt on making an adult sex drama. The titular character, Shanu Bansal, played by Swara Bhaskar, is a sex siren in the town. She is followed by all the boys and men of the town, fawning all over her. Her nymphomaniac side has been supposedly attributed to her split personality—a courtesan named Rasbhari.
The male protagonist Nand Kishor (Ayushmaan Saxena), a school-going boy is a delight to watch. His desi accent and politically incorrect humour will keep you glued over your seat. Conversations with his close friends will remind you about your old school days when objectifying a girl was as casual as giving them rape threat today.
In this coming-of-age drama, at least the characters mature with time, unlike our society which is going in the opposite direction. The titillating scenes with the trope of a hot teacher will keep you hooked up for a while before you take a long break to regret your decision to watch it. The relationship of Nand with his classmate Priyanka, played by Rashmi Agdekar, is fun and soothing to the eyes as it gives you some reprieve from overt sexual overstatures.
The show reflects a poignant truth about our society which can’t stand the overt sexuality or sexual desires of women. It also points to a widely accepted notion of men being men and how they are allowed to act upon their lecherous desires with no qualms. While the intent is commendable, the writers and producers are not able to do justice to it in their script and screenplay.
I particularly liked their title song. Chirantann Bhatt, Manoj Yadav and Vivek Hariharan have done a great job. It was one title song I did not skip even when I wanted to skip the whole episode at times. It is a great watch if you have nothing to do. It will be disappointing for those who added it to their ‘Watch later’ list after checking out its trailer.
It is still a long haul before the Indian industry catches up with its western counterpart in this genre.