The bikini is to the Indian actress what nudity is to her Hollywood counterpart – the ultimate line that is to be crossed in rare circumstances, with the full knowledge that photographic and video evidence of the transgression will stalk her to the grave and beyond.
Meenakshi Shirodkar is best known for being the grandmother of the actresses Namrata and Shilpa Shirodkar and one of the earliest women to wear a one-piece suit on the screen. “In 1938, Master Vinayak made a movie—Brahmachari—about a young man (played by the director) who was trying to follow the radical teachings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and become a celibate, eschewing worldly pleasures (that included junking his collection of movie posters),” writes Diptakirti Chaudhuri in Bollybook: The Big Book of Hindi Movie Trivia. “His steely resolve met the charms of Meenakshi, who threw off her saree and jumped into a pool…”
The evidence never lies, and in Meenakshi Shirodkar’s case, the forensic detail of her crime from the Marathi movie has been stored in a file on YouTube.
Whether one-piece or two-piece, swimwear never fails to create waves. Acting contracts have for years contained highly mythologised “no kissing”, “no lovemaking”, and “no swimsuit” clauses. Actresses have often reneged on their promise of virtue and decency, which proves beyond doubt that they are an untrustworthy lot. Sharmila Tagore wore a Mediterranean blue one-piece in An Evening in Paris (1967), and complemented her feat by posing in a black-and-white floral bikini for Filmfare magazine. History has forgotten that the song in which Tagore showed off her ease with her body also has Shammi Kapoor in an orange bathrobe that exposes his thunder thighs.
Thus it is a matter of immense surprise that the mostly prudish Central Board of Film Certification has passed the Hollywood movie Baywatch and its Indian dubbed versions with only five cuts, none of them applied to the inescapable shots of life guards running on the beach to save lives or simply for the love of it. The CBFC’s usually strict chief Pahlaj Nihalani, in a rare display of maturity and insight, told the DNA newspaper that the June 2 release was harmless enough to earn an A certificate.
“For one, the series ran on satellite television in India for years and contained lengthy shots of women in bikinis,” Nihalani reasoned (yes he can). “Secondly, Indian filmmakers really need to stop making such a big issue about bikinis. Go to Goa or Mauritius. The beaches are carpeted with women in bikinis. What is the big deal about such shots?”
Baywatch has bleeped out what it deems to be unnecessary profanity, thus proving that Indian adulthood is an incomplete project.
They might not always attract the censor’s wrath, but women in splayed bodies clad in swimwear invariably lead to chatter and censure. Dimple Kapadia wore an orange one-piece in her debut Bobby (1973) and a black number in her comeback Saagar (1985). Kapadia was 28 years old and the mother of two daughters at the time of Saagar, but rather than her fitness levels, it’s her lack of inhibition that remains a talking point.
How else must one dress in a swimming pool or at the beach? Actresses have attached sarongs to their waists to conceal their legs, but some of them have chosen the sensible way out – and embedded themselves in the hippocampus for posterity. The offenders include Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, Khushboo, Madhavi, Madhuri Dixit, Amala, Zeenat Aman, Mumtaz, Mandakini, Bipasha Basu, Urmila Matondkar, Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Kajol, Anushka Sharma and Sonam Kapoor.
The list of actresses who have stuck to the aforementioned clauses actually appears to be the shorter one.
Nargis’s swimsuit-clad character in Awara (1951) pays the price for arousing the passions of Raj Kapoor’s easily excited hero. He slaps her around and twists her arm in a display of violence that passes for love.
There’s a whole page, comprising photographic evidence, naturally, dedicated to actresses who have worn swimsuits for their debut films (the list includes Alia Bhatt and Sasha Agha). Alia Bhatt wore a deep pink two-piece in Shandaar (2015) as casually as one might drape a sari. The gobsmacked look on her leading man Shahid Kapoor’s visage was reflected on the faces of many in the audience.
Men, in contrast, have not stripped to conquer as easily. Perhaps to ensure that their manhood is never called into question, Hindi film heroes have been wary of swapping their thigh-length shorts for briefs even while on the beach or in the water. There are notable exceptions – Amitabh Bachchan in Don, Kamal Haasan in Tik Tik Tik, Kabir Bedi in Khoon Bhari Maang, Jackie Shroff in Rangeela, Rahul Bose in Thakshak, John Abraham in Dostana – but on the whole, heroes have left the act of semi-derobing to women. There is absolutely no need for objectification to become gender neutral.
To paraphrase a Whatsapp joke, the bikini moment in movies is as redundant as the “re baba” refrain from the popular Kumar Sanu song Tumse Milne Ko Dil Karta Hai. Directors and writers sweat buckets to weave a swimwear moment into a film. The presence of a swimming pool or a large water body primes viewers into expecting the totally expected. They are often not disappointed. The adults among them have a 116-minute movie packed with women and men in fire engine-red swimwear to feast on. Baywatch has a guaranteed market among the dedicated cult of swimwear devotees, which has not been as well attended to by Indian cinema as it would have liked.
