Konkona Sen Sharma reveals what inspired her Lust Stories film: ‘My friend walked in on her bai having sex’

Konkona Sen Sharma‘s segment The Mirror in Lust Stories 2 is being unanimously praised as the best of the Netflix India anthology. Starring Tillotama Shome and Amruta Subhash, it is a delicious reading of lust, the act of peeping and the pleasure of feeling seen.

(Also Read: Lust Stories director R Balki’s interview: ‘Families are also born out of lust, why shy away from it’)

In an exclusive interview, Konkona talks about the process of creating her lust story, returning to direction after A Death in the Gunj (2016) and why she left the tale open-ended. Excerpts:

There are petitions all across to get you to direct more often. How did The Mirror, your segment in Lust Stories 2, speak to you so strongly that you decided to direct after seven years?

My fantastic producer Ashi Dua approached me asking me if I’d like to direct for Lust Stories. I said, sure let me try. I was thinking about stories and whether I could come up with anything worthwhile. I wanted to create something interesting around lust. So I was thinking from a mom’s angle, from the looking angle, or a being watched angle. Then I came across a friend at a dinner party who told me how she’d walked in on her bai having sex in her house. And I knew that was something I wanted to explore further because there are a lot of things happening there.

But have you been attempting direction in these last seven years?

No. I’ve been busy as an actor. I’ve done a lot of work as an actor between A Death in the Gunj and now. There are things like a web series that are going to come out now. I have a 12-year-old son, the pandemic came and went. I am anyway not a career director. I’m a career actor. I want to keep acting and once in a while, if I have something worthwhile to say and I have the freedom to say it, then I’ll direct.

Your segment is titled The Mirror because it also makes us feel complicit in the act of looking and we also feel seen. Is that why you showed the sex scenes from a distance? Why was this gaze of not going up, close and personal with sex important?

I wasn’t trying to create sexual arousal in my audience. That they can do on their own if they want. I felt that to give Seema (Amruta) the respect and the dignity, I only entered the room when she allowed it, so to speak. The first time we enter the bedroom is when she is performing for Isheeta (Tillotama). And her orgasm is derived from the fact that Isheeta is watching her. That’s the only time we’re up close to witness her pleasure. Otherwise we’re looking at Isheeta, Isheeta is looking at Seema. That was a deliberate decision and there was no need to show sex up, close and personal.

Your film reminded me of By The Sea, Angeline Jolie’s directorial, in which she and Brad Pitt play a married couple who look at a younger couple have sex in the adjacent hotel room through a peephole. It reminds them of how they used to be in the bedroom. Envy is the dominant emotion embedded in their lust. What is the dominant emotion in case of your two lead characters?

What we’re allowed to find sexy, what actually turns us on — it’s all very complicated. Isheeta herself is very conflicted. She tries to confront Seema a couple of times but she’s unable to. It’s very difficult when one doesn’t have the language, the vocabulary. It’s almost like a force beyond her. She’s hooked to it like a drug addict. She’s enjoying this pursual of pleasure at some cost. Both her and Seema are being transgressive in nature but I didn’t want to get into the morality of it. They’re both equally at fault, or not. It’s almost like two thieves stealing pleasure from each other.

There are wide shots of Mumbai in your film, in which the metro line divides slums and high rises. But the fact is that both these classes share a symbiotic relationship. Like a domestic help and the employer. How do you view this almost parasitic relationship?

It’s a very unequal relationship. Even in my film, at the end, it may feel like they’re going to end up together, but Seema is never going to have the privileges that Isheeta has. That’s the reality. It’s also sharing of space. That’s why I wanted to Seema to say those lines, “Teri gandi chaddi tak main dhoti hai aur tu bolti hai mujhse ghin aati hai” (I wash your dirty underwears and you feel disgusted by me?) Or when Isheeta says, “Tujhe ghar ki chabi di, bharosa kiya tujh pe” (I trusted you with the keys to my house) and Seema hits back, “Chabi toh isliye diya na kyunki khud subah uthne ka nahi hota” (You have the keys because you can’t wake up early). So it’s all for our convenience. The emancipation of a lot of economically privileged women comes at the cost of economically underprivileged women. That’s the reality. That’s what’s unfortunate.

You said you didn’t want to cast Tillotama as the bai because she’s struggled with this stereotyping for a long time. But I don’t think she’d mind playing Seema because you treat both women at par.

Of course. That was just a flippant remark. There’s been very less imagination in casting her. Now she’s getting fantastic work and nobody could be happier than me. It’s boring to see her as a house help. She’s already done it fantastically. I needed her for Isheeta because Isheeta is a very under-depicted character. We’ve rarely seen a character like that. I knew Tillotama would be able to bring a certain vulnerability, the inscrutability, the conflict within. There’s something very modern about Tillotama, where she doesn’t do things we’re used to seeing. I needed her for Isheeta, more than I didn’t want to cast her for Seema. Because who’d play Isheeta otherwise? I can’t think of anyone else.

I also love their last shot in the film where both women steal a quick glance from each other as if they’ve made a secret deal. It’s like they’ve shown each other ‘the mirror’ so have nothing to hide. Can you share your thoughts behind that very layered expression?

That’s the thing na. They enjoy each other in this unusual way. But when confronted by Kamal (Seema’s husband) or society in general, they just flip back into their conditioning. Because they don’t have the vocabulary to say, “Ya, I was enjoying watching you” or “Ya, I was enjoying being watched.” This is not an ‘acceptable’ thing. They can’t say it. They’re just conditioned to say “gandi ho, badtameez ho” whatever. Sometimes, the things we feel and the things we’re allowed to feel by society are at odds. What do we do? The safest thing to do is to follow what society is prescribing. It’s not necessarily the most kind, the most just, the most equal, the most fair, but it’s the safest thing to do.

But it’s lovely that from their argument, they went somewhere else. They didn’t know how to react at that point but then they went through that period of introspection, reflection, regret, isolation, understanding, processing and come back to each other. It can never happen in the real world. Maybe they will tell each other ‘I missed you’ some day. It was very important for me to leave the epilogue open-ended. Firstly, to come back to the playful nature of the film and the playful nature of lust. Secondly, because I wanted to give it the feeling of… here’s the apartment, it’s 3’o clock, somebody’s opening the door, but before you can check who, you’re shut out. Because it’s none of our business. They’re consulting adults.

What’s with the 3’o clock time though?

I’m so glad you asked. It could’ve been 2:30 or 4, basically some time in the afternoon. But 3’o clock at night is the witching hour. I’m a big horror fan even though I’m very scared of everything. I’m often awake at 3 am and terrified why I woke up at that particular time. So 3’o clock holds a certain significance for me so I made it 3’o clock in the afternoon. The witching hour of the afternoon.

You pop in the film for a cameo in a voice role, which reminded me of your mother Aparna Sen’s voice cameo in A Death in the Gunj. Why did it have to be you?

See, I wasn’t planning to be in the film anyway because I have such fantastic actors and I was too busy. The only reason I did the voice because I’m the cheapest and most easily available resource. Otherwise I’d have to find somebody, construct it for them, hire them. It was easier for me to do it because I knew exactly what I needed.

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