MAMI - Ask The Sexpert
Mumbai Film Festival, Mumbai
14.10.2017.
Today I saw “Ask the Sexpert” at Mumbai Film Festival on PVR, Lokhandwala, Andheri.
The documentary highlights need for sex education and sex awareness, and it is based on Producer-Director Ms.Vaishali Sinha's four and half years painstaking research and series of interviews with 91 years young Dr. Mohinder Watsa. A real good work indeed.
Dr. Watsa is best-known sexologist in Mumbai.
The genial, no-nonsense nonagenarian runs a column 'Ask the Sexpert' in the 'Mumbai Mirror wherein he answers questions of its readers related to sexual behavior. Dr Watsa started his medical practice as gynaecologist and obstetrician some 65 years ago. He answers questions that range from the routine to the risque, in his column.
Ask the Sexpert reveals the man behind the byline, teasing out details about his domestic routine, his family life, and his stellar service towards demystifying sex in a country that believes in drawing a veil over matters related to human desire.
Sinha shot Watsa at work, peering at his emails through a magnifying glass and dictating his responses to his assistant. She also kept conversation with Dr Watsa's son and daughter-in-law (his wife died in 2006 in the age of 81 ) and his friends and associates, who speak of his pioneering contributions to sex education.
Watsa began writing sex advice columns in the sixties in a magazine named Trends, conducted seminars, workshops for providing a form of sex education in a country where the subject is still not included in the curriculum of most schools. His Mumbai Mirror column was started in the year 2005.
Vaishali places Watsa’s work against the larger context of a society that is unwilling to come to terms with an essential aspect of the human experience. Her interviews with teenagers and social workers reveal immense curiosity as well as staggering ignorance about sexual behavior. Thus her film has become a sex education document.
Sinha also documents Watsa’s counselling sessions. Although he has given up his practice, the therapist occasionally receives patients at his sea-facing apartment in south-central Mumbai. The faces of the patients are masked to protect their identities, but their anguish is uninhibited. Watsa handles questions about sexual incompatibility, dissatisfaction in the bedroom, and the impact of stress on sexual performance with patience and firmness. He has gained a reputation for his acerbic put-downs to earnest and occasionally comical questions about what is permissible and what isn’t. But in the therapy sessions, the real source of Watsa’s reputation becomes clear: he listens without prejudice, and withholds judgement.
As every story about a hero needs a villain, and so Vaishali finds one in Professor Pratibha Naithani, the indefatigable crusader against perceived attacks on public morality. Naithani teaches at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, frequently appears in the media to rail against immorality and obscenity in popular culture and the supposed decline of decency in public life. She has filed cases against the Mumbai Mirror newspaper and Watsa as she feels the column inappropriate to morals, and she would like nothing better than for the column to disappear. She describes Watsa’s efforts as “disastrous”, and says she is particularly disgusted when he seems to be condoning allegedly perverse and transgressive practices. “Are we promoting sex?” she asks.
The question is rhetorical. Whatever the views on the inclusion of a column dealing with graphic matter in a family newspaper, it is clear that Watsa is performing a public service. Some of the astonishment at his achievements stems from his age. When asked about what he must look like, a teenager tells Sinha, “He is probably tall, with a moustache, 40 plus, and keeps his wife happy.”
The actual number of years that the remarkably fit medical professional has spent on the planet causes mirth as well as comfort. Comedian Aditi Mittal tells Sinha in the film, “There is something very non-threatening about an older person talking about sex.”
Watsa’s advanced years have also made him something of a celebrity. As he attends public events to promote the recently published book, 'It’s Normal!', he is thronged by selfie seekers, many of them young women who cannot seem to believe what he looks like in person.
In the film’s most revealing sequence, a young woman spots Watsa during a walk and begs him to stay while she runs home and fetches her mobile phone. Rather than politely turning her down or shuffling off, Watsa waits.
In the question answer session a journalist asked Vaishali about her film's fate in the hands of censor Board. She says that her film is already going to release on Netflix, which will give it much wider audience.
14.10.2017.
Today I saw “Ask the Sexpert” at Mumbai Film Festival on PVR, Lokhandwala, Andheri.
Dr. Watsa is best-known sexologist in Mumbai.
The genial, no-nonsense nonagenarian runs a column 'Ask the Sexpert' in the 'Mumbai Mirror wherein he answers questions of its readers related to sexual behavior. Dr Watsa started his medical practice as gynaecologist and obstetrician some 65 years ago. He answers questions that range from the routine to the risque, in his column.
Ask the Sexpert reveals the man behind the byline, teasing out details about his domestic routine, his family life, and his stellar service towards demystifying sex in a country that believes in drawing a veil over matters related to human desire.
Sinha shot Watsa at work, peering at his emails through a magnifying glass and dictating his responses to his assistant. She also kept conversation with Dr Watsa's son and daughter-in-law (his wife died in 2006 in the age of 81 ) and his friends and associates, who speak of his pioneering contributions to sex education.
Watsa began writing sex advice columns in the sixties in a magazine named Trends, conducted seminars, workshops for providing a form of sex education in a country where the subject is still not included in the curriculum of most schools. His Mumbai Mirror column was started in the year 2005.
Vaishali places Watsa’s work against the larger context of a society that is unwilling to come to terms with an essential aspect of the human experience. Her interviews with teenagers and social workers reveal immense curiosity as well as staggering ignorance about sexual behavior. Thus her film has become a sex education document.
Sinha also documents Watsa’s counselling sessions. Although he has given up his practice, the therapist occasionally receives patients at his sea-facing apartment in south-central Mumbai. The faces of the patients are masked to protect their identities, but their anguish is uninhibited. Watsa handles questions about sexual incompatibility, dissatisfaction in the bedroom, and the impact of stress on sexual performance with patience and firmness. He has gained a reputation for his acerbic put-downs to earnest and occasionally comical questions about what is permissible and what isn’t. But in the therapy sessions, the real source of Watsa’s reputation becomes clear: he listens without prejudice, and withholds judgement.
As every story about a hero needs a villain, and so Vaishali finds one in Professor Pratibha Naithani, the indefatigable crusader against perceived attacks on public morality. Naithani teaches at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, frequently appears in the media to rail against immorality and obscenity in popular culture and the supposed decline of decency in public life. She has filed cases against the Mumbai Mirror newspaper and Watsa as she feels the column inappropriate to morals, and she would like nothing better than for the column to disappear. She describes Watsa’s efforts as “disastrous”, and says she is particularly disgusted when he seems to be condoning allegedly perverse and transgressive practices. “Are we promoting sex?” she asks.
The question is rhetorical. Whatever the views on the inclusion of a column dealing with graphic matter in a family newspaper, it is clear that Watsa is performing a public service. Some of the astonishment at his achievements stems from his age. When asked about what he must look like, a teenager tells Sinha, “He is probably tall, with a moustache, 40 plus, and keeps his wife happy.”
The actual number of years that the remarkably fit medical professional has spent on the planet causes mirth as well as comfort. Comedian Aditi Mittal tells Sinha in the film, “There is something very non-threatening about an older person talking about sex.”
Watsa’s advanced years have also made him something of a celebrity. As he attends public events to promote the recently published book, 'It’s Normal!', he is thronged by selfie seekers, many of them young women who cannot seem to believe what he looks like in person.
In the film’s most revealing sequence, a young woman spots Watsa during a walk and begs him to stay while she runs home and fetches her mobile phone. Rather than politely turning her down or shuffling off, Watsa waits.
In the question answer session a journalist asked Vaishali about her film's fate in the hands of censor Board. She says that her film is already going to release on Netflix, which will give it much wider audience.
Earlier, Vaishali co-directed and produced the documentary “Made in India,” which focused on the personal stories behind the phenomenon of outsourcing surrogate mothers to India. The award-winning film premiered at Hot Docs and aired on PBS in 2012. she has also produced numerous shorts.
She took her primary education from Kendriya Vidyalaya, INS Hamla, earned her film production certificate from New School University New York.
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