Smutty or sexy? Rise of desi erotica on OTT platforms

It’s Karva Chauth and a wife tells her husband that she’d break her fast with him and then goes down on him. It’s soon obvious, though, that they are in a sexually unfulfilling relationship. She is attracted to the neighbourhood Romeo and one day the husband catches them in bed together. And, instead of being angry or upset, he too wants in on the action. Turns out the missing ‘link’ in the couple’s life was the neighbour.This is the first episode of Gandii Baat, ALT Balaji’s hit web series that is in its sixth season now. The tagline ‘Urban Stories from Rural India’ sums up the show succinctly. Each episode of the anthology series, set in small-towns, explores threesomes, lesbian relationships or BDSM. While there is no nudity, there are enough moans and skin show to keep the viewer entranced. medium85399544Gandii Baat is a comparatively tamer part of a burgeoning segment in the OTT space — desi erotica. While the lockdown accelerated the demand for video streaming platforms, the biggest gainers have been those with adult and explicit content. Among the most-watched shows on ALT Balaji — an online streaming that started in 2017 — are Gandii Baat and Ragini MMS Returns. Last year the platform reported a 60 per cent rise in viewership. medium85399485Today it is not just the pheromone-drenched dramas 365 Days, Fatal Affair and Dark Desires, which were in Netflix India’s Top 10 list for weeks, or Amazon Prime Video’s sex comedy Rasbhari, starring Swara Bhaskar, that’s drawing eyeballs — there are more than 40 local streaming platforms. The ones chiefly pushing boundaries the between love, sex and seamy content, however, are being led by smaller players including The Cinema Dosti, Fliz Movies, GupChup and Kooku. The app Hotshots, which is at the centre of the ongoing pornography case against Raj Kundra and others, was also one of the platforms that saw a spike in traffic from March 2020 onwards. medium85399566Edgier contentEven before streaming platforms came to our shores, shows like Crime Patrol and CID fed the voyeuristic needs of the desi audience. As screens became smaller and viewing habits became more individualistic, platforms began looking for stories that were bolder and edgier, and being out of the purview of India’s stringent censorship laws definitely helped them explore.The earliest movers in the segment were Ekta Kapoor’s ALT Balaji and Ullu, a platform that launched in 2018, with shows like Wanna Have A Good Time, Dubeji and the Boys and #MeToo Wolf of Bollywood.Expectedly the viewership of this kind of content is predominantly male. In a study done by Ormax Media in 2019, this audience base was approximately three million viewers. “Today it must be much more,” says Keerat Grewal, partner, Ormax Media. “This segment existed before the lockdown and before OTTs came into India. The viewership is 77 per cent male from the Hindi speaking market, the median age is 27 and they are found across urban India, and not just in the small towns.” For the study, the segment was labelled LSD – Lust, Swears, Daring. “The largest segment was what we call the Young Global Citizen, people who binge-watch international shows, but LSD, with about 11.5 per cent of the OTT space, was the third-largest group,” she adds. Beyond titillationToday erotic content across desi apps is anchored by comedy, crime or horror. Director Vikram Bhatt believes that “there wouldn’t be too many takers if a piece of content features sex for the sake of titillation”. Bhatt first dipped his toes in this space with Maaya, a 2017 series, which revolves around BDSM, and has since directed others like Twisted and Spotlight.“Most people watch these platforms on their phone. When you have access to free porn sites on the phone, why would someone watch soft porn? People who are looking to be entertained will watch a show because they are interested in the story or connect with the characters and not because there’s sex in the show,” he says. “My latest show Bisaat has just one kiss and there’s no love-making scene, because the story didn’t require it.” medium85399638In an interview with Mirror in 2019, Vibhu Agarwal, CEO and founder of an OTT platform, which has more than 3.2 million paid subscribers for its risqué content, said that “porn is easily available and people are bored of watching white people and their fantasies”. The platform finds that plots featuring illicit relationships, such as “between a devar and bhabhi” or that “overtly-sexualised neighbourhood aunty” get more hits. The target audience for them is clear: Aggarwal says his subscribers are “dominated by the B-segment, which includes rickshawalas, cooks, watchmen and the like”.The fine lineWhile the issue has still not been settled in court whether Raj Kundra was hosting pornography on the streaming site — both his wife and actor Shilpa Shetty and lawyer Subhash Jadhav have categorically denied it was. A lot of such shows that are popular fall in the grey zone between erotica and sleaze. medium85397838The law, too, is not specific on this. In an interview with TOI, Vikas Pahwa, senior advocate, says: “In generic terms, the difference is that erotica is primarily an artistic viewpoint of an individual, like, you know, some kind of a picture or a painting, or a statue, with an objective to seek appreciation for the art form. But when we talk about pornography, the objective is not about the art, it is to seek arousal. The very act of putting out such content is to satisfy lust and base desires.”The very fact that India is not open about what it likes to watch and continues to look at all its homegrown content, which is sexual in nature, through a derogatory lens, also fuels a pitched moral debate about it. “It’s a testament to our society’s double standards. Everyone watches this kind of content, but no one will admit to it in public. How else do you explain the kind of numbers shows like Kavita Bhabhi, Virgin Bhaskar or Fuh se Fantasy do? The English-speaking audience is okay with Fifty Shades of Grey or 365 Days, but will make fun of Gandii Baat,” says a scriptwriter, who has ghostwritten multiple shows for this segment, but requests anonymity because her “parents don’t know I write this kind of stuff”.Untitled Carousel 84824818