Neena Gupta, who has starred in several parallel films and television shows, and Hindi movie star Jackie Shroff make a fine pair in Sonam Nair’s Khujli. The short film, produced by Terribly Tiny Talkies, begins with an itch in the lower neck region and moves to an altogether different sensation in another part of the body. The quaintly named Girdharilal (Shroff) finds a pair of hot-pick handcuffs in his son’s bedroom. He thinks he knows what they are for, but it is left to his wife Roopmati (Gupta), who has devoured Fifty Shades of Grey, to explain the finer points of BDSM. Roopmati encourages Girdharilal to channel his inner Christian Grey, leading to a comic sprint around the bedroom.
The actors turn out wonderfully relaxed performances, and seem utterly at home with the idea of kinky sex. Stranger still is the suggestion by Nair, who has previously directed the coming-of-age drama Gippi, that sexual assault masks consensual behaviour. Smarter than the line that suggests that Basanti and Gabbar from the movie Sholay were actually playacting sadomasochistic tendencies is Girdharilal’s threat that he will beat up his wife in 50 shades of every colour with a spoon. Roopmati looks blissful: this is one itch she is happy to scratch.