The Indian Woman's Quest For Sexual Fulfilment Makes It To A Film

When writer Radhika Anand wrote a three-page story based on personal experience, at first she didn't have the courage to pitch to filmmakers. It was not the first time she had written about the female orgasm. The superhit short film that she had co-written two years before used cooking metaphors to describe the sexual act, likening the final release to the whistle of the pressure cooker. Its script unfolded as a conversation between a mother, her daughter and a domestic worker. Its disclaimer joked that the words ‘sex’, ‘intercourse’ and ‘orgasm’ had been “respectfully avoided”.

Quite like the female orgasm, the story Anand wrote remained undiscovered, unexpressed—until after Veere Di Wedding, a hit film with a legendary vibrator scene, co-produced by Rhea Kapoor and Ekta Kapoor. Anand shared her script with Rhea who, in turn, shared it with Ekta. Both women loved it. “There is a certain amount of freedom in seeing women talk about what they talk about with their girlfriends on screen,” Rhea told me.

Standup comic Prashasti Singh—who says in her hour-long show Door Khadi Sharmaaye that she has “spent so much cumulative time on dating apps that the boys on them have grown up in front of me”—came on board as the writer of the just released film Thank You For Coming, the story of a 32-year-old woman who has never experienced an orgasm.

The Hindi film opened to mixed reviews but we can all agree that in a country that is threatened by female pleasure, any movie about this subject—especially one that is written by women—is an invaluable addition to our pop culture. It’s also a most helpful resource for younger women who will hopefully realise there is is nothing ‘wrong’ with them and that their journey of sexual discovery doesn’t have to rest on the twin pillars of shame and guilt. There’s even a chance that male viewers might learn how they can do better. 

The women collaborated to reveal, on the big screen, one of the biggest open secrets of Indian sexuality: “70% women never orgasm their whole life because 90 percent men don’t know how to do it.” The first half of that sentence is a slight variation of the responses of Indian women to Durex condoms’ Global Sex Survey in 2017 but it may well be accurate. The second half is something every woman has discussed with her girlfriends.

Rhea, Anand and Singh dug into their personal lives and the lives of the women they know, to unmask some home truths. How conditioning makes women blame themselves for everything from not getting a promotion to not finding a partner. How people feel threatened when faced with confident, unafraid women. How difficult it is for us to find sexual fulfilment. “It’s the most personal film I’ve made,” Rhea said.

It could be the story of any of us. Many sexually active women I asked shared stories of orgasms discovered only later in life. “The first one was at 38,” R said. D said that she was sexually active for many years before she had her first partnered orgasm. Most of her partners didn’t know that women rarely orgasm through vaginal intercourse. It was the era before sex gyan on clitoral orgasms was freely available on the internet and she was hazy on this too.

“I had given up on ever achieving one. I thought I was one of those unlucky who will never be able to enjoy that state of bliss. Deficient even,” D said. Until four months after she got married, one lazy Sunday afternoon, when his fingers lingered. “I felt the build up and my voice was louder than usual. The inhibitions fell, and I orgasmed,” she said.

Another woman, let’s call her M, said the first time she didn’t recognise that she was having an orgasm and asked her partner to stop. “I was like ‘what is this?’, I can’t stand this feeling. I didn’t know it was ‘pleasure’.” For years after, she says, she didn’t experience it again. “And I didn’t push for it either! It was way after my masters and starting a job and moving to Mumbai when I really understood what it meant and how important it is,” she said.

P’s first brush with bliss came when they were seated, her first change in position from the missionary. “I just Googled the position and it’s called a wrapped lotus,” she said. “I kept riding him to the finish and I exploded.”

Mostly though, the female orgasm dies before it is born due to a partner’s selfishness; a society that doesn’t concern itself with female pleasure; lack of sex education; and poor technique. “Some blissfully think they have entered the vagina until their wife tells them otherwise; actually, they were having intercourse between the thighs,” the late sexuality counsellor Mahinder Watsa told me in 2015. Common myths, according to Durex India, include that women must be in love to orgasm and that women who are unable to orgasm have psychological issues.

Making the film was a balancing act. Actor Swara Bhasker still faces apoplectic trolls for that vibrator scene in Veere. So what if men don’t know how to give women orgasms—they are the first to rage when we take ownership for our own pleasure. “The writing and promotion of the film was a metaphor for being a woman—we kept weighing how we can’t be too vanilla and we can’t be too sexual,” said Rhea. “It was a constant tightrope walk.”

A told me she still remembered how it felt when she first orgasmed. “It felt like a white cloud burst in my head and all I could see was white and calm. No words and thoughts formed after that.”

Consider what your partner may be missing when you get intimate next.

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.