F**k! What has the censor board done now? It has opened an all-new 36 chambers of Shaolin. Thank you very much.

Dear new supremo, Mr Nihalani, from the time pictures started moving, cinema was always meant to reflect reality, be a mirror to the society. From Italy’s Neo Realist Cinema to France’s Nouvelle Vague to our own parallel cinema movement, motion pictures have tried to capture time and space.

Going through your filmography as a producer, it’s understandable that you might not know much about that. The 18 films that you produced mostly had men with oozing testosterone chasing skirts and ghagras of coquettish women giving come-hither looks. Your Andaz had the hero singing: “Khada hai, khada hai, khada hai dar pe tere aashiq khada hai” while your heroine in Aankhen sang: “Khet gaye baba bazaar gayee ma, akeli hoon gharma tu aaja balma.”

Well, Sir, that is not what happens out there. Never did. What actually happens out there is that girls get raped every day. And that is an example of violence against women (point 12 under Hindi section). Something you don’t want films made in this country to show.

If you cannot look at the subject in all its ugliness, you can’t raise awareness about it or even attempt a shift in the mindset. Look at that packet of cigarette on the desk. And purely in terms of a cinematic narrative, if you don’t show how Bill treated the Bride, her killing of Bill would have little sense of revenge for her or satisfaction for the audience.
While some of the words you have listed shouldn’t figure in films for young audiences, how can you blanket-ban words in films of all certification? Language is an essential tool for a writer-director to etch a character. A research scholar and a taxi driver and a suicidal farmer won’t speak the same language. That everyone behind the wheels in Indian metros use ‘ch***ya’ or ‘b*****od’ is another matter altogether but cuss words form the lexicon of many a citizen of this country.

If an 18+ viewer’s mind gets coloured after hearing the word ‘bast**d’ or ‘di**’, then he or she needs help of a different kind. It’s completely okay to see Sunny Leone in a transparent white cloth being milked — milk being poured on her, Sir — but you can’t have people hearing words like ‘g***u’ or ‘har****’. Slow clap. Very slow clap.
And let’s not even get started with the word ‘f**k’! Osho in a five-minute speech, available for free on YouTube, calls the word “f**k” the most interesting word in the English dictionary. “It’s a magical word... it can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love. There are not many words with the versatility of ‘f**k’.” How the f**k does one explain that its usage goes way beyond its literal sexual meaning? Oh, you have banned double-meaning words too!
Yes, it’s useless to try and explain anything to you at all. In your swachh bharatiya chalachitra abhiyan, you will definitely strangle — bleep out or mute — many an important voice and slam the brakes on creativity. When world cinema is hitting new highs of realism and truths, Indian movies will now be scripted with your gluten-free censor diet in hand.

And god bless the films that have already been made or shot and are yet to be censored. They can ‘fu**ing’ rest in peace!

Pratim D. Gupta