Actress Kubbra Sait recalls that the biggest joke life played on her was when a scene from Sacred Games was put out on PornHub and she received screenshots from people who said, “We don’t believe you made it here.” Though she said in jest that “wow, now I have an additional audience watching me”, she points out in an interview to Lachmi Deb Roy that people in general associate nudity with pornography “almost as if our minds have not evolved beyond that”. Excerpts:
What do you think of pornography?
I think we all have a right to the way we like to sexually please ourselves. Nobody needs to ask us what we are doing in the privacy of our homes, in our bedrooms, and it’s ridiculous for people to turn around and put their high moral ground onto what we believe is right. I was very clear about it when I was playing a transgender who does a frontal nudity scene. I did not want it to be tarnished by the fact that it involved nudity, that I was showing my prosthetic genital on screen. What I really wanted to do was convey the heart, the trials and tribulations of the character. When you watch a show like that and find it on PornHub, then there is very little that you can decipher from the mass frenzy that is around porn. So, let’s not fool ourselves to say that, “OMG, I was there, so my value or my prestige or my dignity is at stake.” No, it is not. People will choose to put whatever wherever, but because I am found on a “porn site”, that doesn’t equate my work to pornographic work. I have watched porn in the past. I think I have been single for the longest time and that is how I find release. The stuff I watch is erotica. I don’t endorse the unrealistic norms of pornography that you watch in the confines of your room, but they are actors at the end of the day.
Is porn inherently degrading for women?
There is a beautiful documentary on Rocco, an Italian porn lord, which will make your skin crawl as he believes he is the reincarnation of Satan. That was the God he lived with and the veil that he wore. I have the freedom to say, “Yes, I have seen Rocco,” but today you are constantly worried about being judged in the society you live in. Why can’t I watch Rocco? When women are being subjected to constant degradation of who they are or what their self-worth is, then why isn’t it possible that we see the story from the point of view of a man? And the man doesn’t feel for a moment of his life that what he feels is justified and what he did is fine. At one point, he quit pornography, and I think we need to have fluidity in our perspective and not be hard-wired to one belief, which is probably not even ours, but instilled in us by society. We should have the freedom to be open about it, and think about it.
Is it possible for women to partake of porn as free, liberated subjects?
The first possible trade from the time of slavery has been in sex. We have watched it on shows like Game of Thrones and we cringe. We learn that it is not the way forward—women are not slaves, men are not slaves. Pornography cannot be hinged on the hooks of slavery, but if it is by choice and that is what a woman or a man wants to do, then we should allow them to do that. Why are we a country that has suddenly given a celebrity status to Sunny Leone, who is a superstar when it comes to pornography? We are interested in following her life, her mind, so why can’t we look at her as a liberated woman who chose and stood by her actions? Not everybody in the world of pornography is a victim, and we have to stop speaking for everybody and start letting people be.
Do women watch porn?
Yes! I do watch porn and do not find anything wrong with it.
What is the difference between erotica and porn?
Erotica is more real. It’s more in the zone of lovemaking. It’s not trashy and it’s respectful. Porn has a lot of pain and a lot of disrespect inflicted, but I have known of couples who go on sex escapades and involve themselves in BDSM—that is their way of flipping the switch between power that probably exists at home, so where a man may be subdued in the BDSM room, he is the one in control otherwise, whereas the woman is submissive. I think it is a huge release for people to indulge and to take care, and for them to make their own choices. So porn doesn’t necessarily happen on a screen, it happens in reality and it could be by choice, and you and I cannot make a decision on someone else’s life, because we do not know their life and we do not live their life.
Isn’t India too repressive when it comes to sexuality, and does that not primarily work by reducing women's agency?
We are so shy and it is because of the prejudice in our minds, that what society has told us is right or wrong without even thinking that hey, buddy, we are the country with the largest population. We are a country that has Kamasutra. I recently watched a show called Sex Life, which I thought was the most regressive and the worst show made, but it is her choice to go and explore her sexuality with her ex-boyfriend, or to fantasise about it, or to think that she can write about it and her husband can recreate this for her in her present life that she has chosen to partake in. At the end of the day, women who are educated and smart and who do not necessarily find men who match up to their capability, and I don’t mean physical capability, but in general their minds, then just as much as a man has the freedom to explore his sexuality, so has a woman.
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