‘There is a Samantha in every housewife'

Four lanky teenagers walk out of a Bandra multiplex looking utterly bewildered.
Sex And The City (SATC)? Sex? they bellow. “It was about old women. Humne socha kuch ‘aur’ hoga. [We thought it was about something ‘else’]. But these Neanderthals aside, almost everyone in the city has one word on their minds: Sex. While the women can’t get enough of the Manolo Blahniks and Mr Big, the men have had it up to their ears with Carrie and her friends.

“This movie should be called Shoes And The City,” moans 18-year-old Rahul Vaswani. Among the giggly girls and middle-aged women gushing over Samantha’s wisecracks, one wonders how these boys landed up in the theatre in the first place. Shouldn’t they be watching Indiana Jones or something?

Alisha Narayan, a self-proclaimed SATC maniac, knows exactly why she is here — she simply can’t get enough. A few months ago, Narayan started an SATC community on Orkut, but apart from a few ‘genuine’ Gucci-worshipping, Carrie-and-Co-crazy fans, the rest joined to only find good “sax”. A few days later it became a portal for exchanging links for the best porn sites and C-grade movie meets.

“People simply don’t get it,” Narayan proclaims. “Watching it is a taboo. But still, you will find girls stepping out tonight in their best heels for a few Cosmos and to celebrate the return of NYC’s favourite girl gang. They taught the women of the world to have sex like men. Welcome back, girls!”

When Sex And The City premiered on HBO in India around five years ago, the show was banned by most parents. “They are bold and independent women who believe in loving themselves more than a man and not having children. It didn’t go well with our parents,” says Narayan. “Plus it has the ‘S’ word in the title.” But soon girls were sneaking out for pyjama parties every Tuesday instead of Saturday to find out what advice Carrie Bradshaw had for them this time.

A favourite with most teenagers was to take online tests to find out which SATC character they were. “I am Samantha,” says Narayan proudly. But it was the middle-aged housewife who finally stepped out of the closet and discussed sex openly. “I used to put my daughters to sleep at 10 sharp every Tuesday. Then, at 11pm, I would shift from the melodramatic Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi to the sassy SATC,” says Trupti Subramanium.

A few Tuesdays down the line, she started noticing the frequent visits her daughter started making to friends’ places every Tuesday for ‘project’ work. Three years later, when the show opened in India, the mother-daughter duo decided to go together. “There is a Samantha in every housewife,” says Trupti sheepishly.

Samiya Shakir, a student of Rizvi College, says that a few months ago, when the release date was declared, it was decided that the girls would catch the first show in the city. “I have all the seasons on DVD. We picked a day and watched the entire show for 24 hours non-stop,” she says. Shakir’s only grouse is the job the censor board has done with the movie. “I could tell,” she says. “The editing was outrageous. They showed Steve’s crinkly a**, but chopped off the rest of the steamy scenes.”

Sonal Khandelwal, however, is slightly disappointed with the movie. “It wasn’t great. But I have missed them sooooo much over the past three years, I would have watched them even if they would have just slept through the two hours,” she says.

But what about the men? “Men wouldn’t want to be caught dead watching the show,” laughs Shakir. “They react to it as if it were a disease.”
r_raj@dnaindia.net