Let's Talk About Sex, Baby!

A new spate of ‘sex comedies’ has been trying to normalise conversations around taboo subjects

- Jai Arjun Singh

Shilpi Dasgupta’s Khandaani Shafakhana opens with the very word “sex”—pronounced “sheksh”—drawing shudders from small-town medical representatives who want nothing to do with a clinic that brings such “chhee-chhee” things into the open. From this the film moves towards a climactic courtroom discussion where many (including the protesters from the first scene) are so engrossed in their arguments that they barely realise how often they are using this “dirty” word.

Normalising conversations and enabling healthier attitudes—such is the film’s intent, its arc paralleling the growth of its protagonist (played by Sonakshi Sinha) who goes from being just “Baby” to a hakim (a physician), after she inherits her deceased uncle’s sex clinic. One might speculate that the medicines Hakim mama (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) dispensed were placebos—the real worth of his treatment lay in how he got people to open up about sex.