Envy actors and their inexhaustible (on-screen) sex lives? Don’t.

Lovemaking is the most painful activity on the planet. On film. Whenever I read “…and they make love” in a script, I wince. Memories of Aparna Sen saying, during the filming of 15, Park Avenue: “Relax your head to the side an inch” or “move your upper arm two inches left and tilt your neck a little lower” return with remorseless clarity.

Fact is, when it comes to lovemaking on film, you can never get it right. It’s nothing like the rest of acting. Emoting, dancing the bhangra, shooting old men, sobbing over a dead brother’s grave, masturbating, even dying – they’re all things one can do reasonably well with lots of practice, either by getting under the skin of the character or by sheer instinct. Lovemaking laughs at all these attempts. You can try all you will to use your 27 years of experience in the activity, your ease with your character or your ability to make the mojo flow at will, but nothing will work. Finally, your confidence broken, your sexiness evaporated, your inhibitions reminding you of the time you were 16, you will be reduced to a quivering heap of discomfiture, meekly following orders barked at you by an exasperated director.

So what makes lovemaking so painful? First, the scene has to be broken down into a series of shots that suggest passionate, uninhibited sex, an activity that, unlike filming, say, a game of badminton with your grandmother, cannot be “played” out for real. It all starts off rather inauspiciously with you seeing yourself with your receding hairline unfailingly noticeable in every storyboard frame thanks to a passive-aggressive sketching artist who hates the fact you’re going to be fondling Laila Rouass/Mallika Sherawat/Any Other Unfortunate. As each frame details, in desultory pencil strokes, where her lips will be in relation to yours, how her back will arch as you touch her neck, and finally a close-up of your buttocks, you realize this may as well be a science experiment in school.

Next, the actual shooting of the scene. Before anything can start, the director asks all female crew to leave the set, lest they get maddeningly aroused at the sight of two pretend-naked bodies and start ripping their clothes off. So now you have six, bored Malayali lightmen resetting their unforgiving lights as you and your co-star fake-banter your way on to a bed that’s as rickety and noisy on the inside as it is plush and silk-robed on the outside. Once all lights have been focused, the lightmen are asked to leave and the first AD shouts for the wardrobe and make-up persons. The heroine’s body is re-moisturized, and foundation reapplied to her cleavage, legs and face, in that order. Her hair is teased to lust-maddened untidiness. The sheets are adjusted so a heartstopping curve of her back-to-bum is made visible. Everybody is herded off the sets and it’s locked down. A closed set. And, we begin.

No, we don’t. It’s personal hygiene time. Time to check the breath. Check. Body odour. Check. Pieces of spinach stuck in the teeth. Removed. Out come a hail of mints, elaichi, mouthwash, deodorant, perfume, and then, just to be on the safe side, a few breath-freshening sheets tucked away under the pillow for takes three and four. And then we’re off. A few tentative sniffs; lip brushes; the first half-kiss; but then our noses knock and the director yells “cut!” and there’s nervous giggles all around. The director indulges us this once and pretends to be amused.
The camera rolls again. Somehow, the kissing and initial fondling is done with and we come to the business end of things. That’s when it gets harder. The man’s on top, so how does one do that without making any contact? How do we make sure the camera catches her desire-drenched face if she’s buried under me? Here’s how: I am on top of her, balancing on my toes and palms, arching my back, craning my head, smiling into her eyes and thrusting with gentlemanly passion into a cubic foot of air. She writhes, her nails tightening on my triceps, and all I can think of is, “God, get me out of here. I’m in physical pain, her mints are losing the battle to garlic prawn, the bed’s going to break and we’re losing the sunset light.”

Lovemaking on film is forcing two human beings who’ve never come within smelling distance of each other, to take off their clothes in front of 10 strangers, under hot lights, in an airless room, with the body odour of unwashed director’s assistants and the manic tension of a director thickening the air, and then asking them to simulate the most uplifting, ecstatic copulation ever known to man. Pain. Pure pain.