Mastram

I wanted to watch this flick when it released but the mediocre and negative reviews kept me away. For some reason I remembered this flick last week and promptly downloaded a not so great copy. 

I have grown up reading Mills and Boon which are soft porn books targeted at the female audience and a movie about a writer of this genre in the 80s intrigued me. I also know a friend who told me long back that he prefers reading porn than watching it. Reading gives us the scope for imagination and there is nothing more powerful than the imagination. Watching porn on the other hand is boring and mechanical. 


Mastram stars Rahul Bagga and Tara Alisha Berry. It has been directed by Akhilesh Jaiswal. This is his first film and Tara's Bollywood debut. 

The movie is about Ram who is educated and wants to become a Hindi writer but he is married off to Renu- played by Tara. When he tells Renu about his dream of becoming a writer she encourages him and he starts writing. One fine day he quits his job at the bank and starts doing the rounds of publishers' offices without any luck. When he meets Purohit and Bharti, they ask him to add some 'masala' to his novel. He comes across a porn movie at the theatre and ends up writing a porn story. Purohit and Bharti print 30 copies of the story to check the response. Overwhelmed with the demand, they ask him to write more such stories under the pseudonym of 'Mastram'. Ram also convinces them to publish one of his non-porn novel and they do so but nobody buys it. During a negotiation with Purohit over money, things get heated up and he walks out. He starts looking for another publisher but cannot find one. On the other hand, there is a strong demand for Mastram's porn series and Purohit takes him back. 

The story after this break is inspired by real life characters. He writes about his wife having sex with his friend in the kitchen while he is in the other room and Ram having sex with his friend's wife. But his friend finds out and all hell breaks loose. 

Ram continues to write the porn series.

I liked the treatment of the movie- there are no songs except in the beginning and end. There is no rona dhona or emotional atyachaar. The porn/sex scenes are minimal. There are a lot of reviews online which lament the fact that this is not a 'porn' movie. Seriously, there are negative reviews because there isn't enough sex. 

At 1.38 hours the movie is short and sweet and the end is left hanging which is good. We all have read/watched porn at some point of time in our lives and yet we look down on people who act in it or write about it. There cannot be a happy ending to this.

Liked the movie a lot. Worth a watch. And it has effectively wiped off the terrible feeling after the bummer 'PK'.