In Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Zeenat Aman cruised through the film in half cholis (blouses) and mini saris, with the camera sensuously lingering on her barely hidden breasts and thighs. Again, this was the anatomy of a devout temple singer and any defilement or vulgar voyuerism of this pristine female form would be tantamount to sacrilege. For only the irreligious could harbour impure (read sexual) fantasies about a Meerabai clone.
Again in Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Mandakini, the protagonist, has bared her breast, perchance for the first time in popular cinema. But Raj Kapoor's peculiar brand of sexspeak remains intact here also. For again, it is the breast of a mother, who pulls it out to nurse her newborn. And, in case, anyone gets turned on by the splendour of a well-endowed bustline, Kapoor would like to dismiss it as an abnormal reaction of an unhealthy mind. Ganga, the defenceless mother, berates the onlookers who begin to devour her with lustful glances, as she tries to feed her hungry infant in a crowded train. A holy soliloquy on motherhood, sisterhood and womanhood is cleverly woven in to quell any natural impulses by branding them as unnatural.
Erotica then, in Kapoor's film theory, was not an acceptable entity. The film-maker tried to de-sex the breast and present it in a more pristine form. One where the usual sexual impulses were not permissible. Of course, the magic didn't work that way for the viewer. Nevertheless, Kapoor merrily cruised along in the chimera of his romantic sensuousness, where he tried to make it proper and almost ethical for a woman to bare her breast in a traditional, orthodox society.
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