At the outset, let it be said that Sunny Leone’s fifth story (from her kitty of erotica) is not accurately named. Titled The Cinema, the story begins and paces itself somewhere in the middle around a local cinema – but it isn’t the be-all and end-all of the story. I do understand, however, the need to name it thus: the cinema adds a sort of rustic charm, an otherworldliness to what could otherwise have been a pretty banal tale.
Because, without the cinema and the backdrop of a mythical town called Belapur (we love that Leone’s explored the ever-successful trope of fictional townships here), the story would’ve been about a man who watches a woman in secret. (You could almost imagine a peephole in a haystack.) She lets him. They eventually come together (after a moment of realisation in a cinema) – but he refuses to make love to her unless he’s made a ‘man of himself’.
Pretty Bollywood-esque this, but Leone somehow manages to infuse some charm into the tale by desisting from trying too hard. If there is one writerly quality about Miss Leone that has endeared this reader to her over the past few nights, it has been this sheer, unassuming self on paper, this wanting to tell the truth. You can almost feel her having written a sentence or two – then scratched them out because they weren’t believable enough.
The lack of pretence is a key element of The Cinema too.
When we come to the core of the matter, though – the erotica – it isn’t a big sell. One will love, once again (like her previous night’s story), the equal footing of both participants in sex. However, the writing of the sexual act itself is no different from any of her others, and will tire one a little with the repetition. I am not sure, for instance, why each of the women in all five stories thus far have had to have ‘ample breasts’ and couldn’t have had any other kind of breasts.
The tale of The Cinema is a lilting, humble one – replete with small-town imagery. There are excited gaggles of men and women. There’s a tailor shop and descriptions of farms. There is also the reference to Rajesh’s (the male protagonist) wanting to join the army – a simple, humble hope. Kamana too is a fitting name (for the female protagonist), as Sunny explains herself – her name meaning ‘desire’
Whilst I come to the end of her fifth story, I realise that I have gotten comfortably used to the happy ending in Miss Leone’s stories, and am already looking to a sixth one.
(You can read The Cinema and the remaining stories in Sweet Dreams on the Juggernaut app for Android phone.)
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