"Aise kaise likh sakte hai?" Real story inspired Konkona's 'Lust Stories 2'

MUMBAI: Multitalented actor Konkona Sensharma has also showcased her directorial abilities in projects like 'The Mirror,' a segment in 'Lust Stories 2', which stands out for its subtle portrayal of sexuality through a feminine perspective. In an interview with ANI, Konkona discussed how a real-life story inspired her for the project in which she addresses themes like sexuality, desire and class differences in society through the prism of lust.

"It's not like I went with a plan to direct it. Ashi Dua, my wonderful producer, came to me and said, 'Will you do Lust stories?' and I was like, I don't have a story, give me a few months. If I can come up with a story, I'll do it; otherwise, I won't do it.' She said, 'You'll come up and so I was looking for.' So, I had lust on my mind, looking for lust stories, and you don't want to just clean lust because it will be a little boring because anybody knows lust. So I wanted to mix it with motherhood or something interesting." 'The Mirror' is a story of Ishita (Tillotama Shome), a graphic designer in her early 40s, who lives alone and suffers from frequent migraines. One afternoon, Ishita walks in to find the househelp Seema (Amruta Subhash), having sex with her husband, Kamal (Shrikant Yadav) on the bed. Instead of following convention and firing the help, Ishita dons the role of a voyeur and starts arriving home on time to watch the couple have sex.

Konkona shared how she got the idea from a real-life story. "I heard this real-life story. My friend who lives on her own came back one day and encountered a situation like this herself, the bai, except there was no conversation; she put her hand out, the bai put the key, and the story ended. "But I just was putting myself in that situation thinking that, how do you deal with the situation? I might just run if I run out because, oh my God, with the shock, you just run out. I have this habit, me and my girlfriends, we chat on the phone a lot. So if I had been just talking to her, I would just call it back ... we would discuss it. And then I just kept imagining this, and it just kept playing out like this. I imagined it like this, and I found even when my friend narrated that story of the real-life anecdote, I found everything is already there in this situation."

"Also I didn't want to get into the morality of it. I felt both (the characters) were transgressing, both were doing something wrong. I think it would have been a very different reaction if she had not been a bai (help) and someone else. What you can get away with by saying to your bai (maid) "When Tillotama Shome says, 'it's my word against yours, and who will believe you over me,' is something we all know. And does she not know how her maid is living, as we all know what chawls are like in Mumbai?," Konkona said.

"And I know the Ishitas (Tillotama's character) of the world would be watching it, not the Seemas of the world. So, you enter the film with Ishita, you encounter it from here, so you have all the time and space to go and get your shock and disgust out of the way. And then you can just complicate that further. And then we go into Seema's chawl and then we see how she's living...." On talking about sexuality in older women or different strata or senior love and how people look at it, the 44-year-old actor said, "Firstly, I wanted to say women in any class or society can barely acknowledge their own desires. Tillotama's character says those things to her. You know, the conversations they have. I wanted it to be just said out loud because we have normalized it, and we are forgetting we are normalizing it. We're not humanizing some people, and that's not right."

However, Konkona said that it was not easy for her to write the story and that she did not think so far ahead to dwell on questions like whether people were ready or not to accept such a provocative "chi chi" topic. "I honestly, I never thought of that. I never thought so far ahead. I shocked myself when we were writing it. I was like aise kaise likh sakte hai," Konkona said in the interview with ANI.

The actor said her thought process was "My God ... we will write this.. there so much will do. I scandalized myself only, but I found it a very exciting and almost dangerous idea, and I never thought are people ready or not ready to accept it? I was surprised that so many people showed it so much exactly, yes, you're right, but there must be some sections who I don't know. Maybe don't like like it. Asked about the concept of presenting "senior love" as well as potraying sex in artistic manner and not just the yesteryear crude technique of using two flowers or eyes to depict love and leave it to the audience to deduce the scene, Konkona said she intended her films to be more than skin show.

"But I don't want to titillate anybody. I'm not interested in providing any kind of arousal, you can do that for yourself. It's available everywhere... I'm actually talking about other issues... How we treat other human beings and how much we live in denial because, when the two women have that fight, it could have been very easily solved." Referring to 'Mirror' in 'Lust Stories 2', Konokona said, "... Tillotama said Yeah, I used to watch you. Amrita said Yeah... I know you used to watch me. Actually they are in sync, they have a perfect thing going, she likes to watch, she likes to be watched..but not the husband."

Incidentally, in another segment in Lust Story anthology, actor Neena Gupta essays the role of a grandmother who encourages conversations on sex. On filmmaker Karan Johar who has praised Konkona for her phenomenal direction skills in 'Lust Stories 2' she said, "It shows the generosity of his spirit."

Konkona whose repertoire includes 'Page 3', 'Omkara', '15 Park Avenue', 'Luck By Chance', 'Wake Up Sid,' among others is currently part of the Netflix crime series 'Killer Soup,' directed by Abhishek Chaubey. The series stars Manoj Bajpayee, Nasser, Sayaji Shinde, Lal, Anbuthasan, Anula Navlekar, and Kani Kusruti in pivotal roles. The series revolves around Swathi Shetty, a budding cook who wishes for the entire world to enjoy her soup. One mishap kicks off a chain reaction of accidents and frantic cover-ups that find her and her partner in hot water.