History Of Women Who Write Erotica In India Like ‘Bad Girl’ in Virgin Bhasskar

Virgin Bhasskar is quite a popular erotic and romantic comedy on ZEE5. In the recently released second season, the story of Bhaskar ‘Bad Boy’ Tripathi, a porn writer takes an interesting turn. While he falls in love and stops writing erotic novels, the demand for his work grows. A girl named Pakhi (Jiya Shankar) sees this as a good opportunity to make money.

She writes an erotic novel and gets it published under the name of Bad Boy, before joining Bhaskar and becoming a writer team ‘Bad Boy-Bad Boy’. In doing so, she brings a much needed female perspective to the kind of erotica that people are watching or reading.

Watch her story of going from a girl in a hostel to a successful erotica writer in the first episode of Virgin Bhasskar 2.

Pakhi is just an example of more and more women who are making their way in the erotic writing industry. They are owning the narrative of how their desires are sexualised, which was not always the freedom they enjoyed. Ismat Chugtai wrote the sexually charged story ‘Lihaaf‘  in 1942 about lesbian lovers. The book was banned and declared obscene, nevertheless, she continued to write about taboo subjects.

Much like Pakhi hid her true identity by using the pen name ‘Bad Girl’, many women today also write erotic using pseudonyms. A collection of nine erotic stories were published under the name of Aranyani, which is not the author’s real name. The main reason for using different names is the fact that women writing about their desires is still shocking to some and answering near and dear ones might be a problem.

However, there are women who are unafraid of dealing with the stigma around sex. Sanjana Chowhan writes erotic series for e-reading app Juggernaut. She defends her work because she believes there’s nothing wrong is reading or writing erotica. She writes about women who break away from repression and in control of their desires.

While we continue to live in a sexually repressed society, more and more writers are breaking the norms and writing more healthy stories of desire don’t over-sexualise the female gender.

Watch more female-driven erotic series like Gandii Baat and XXX also streaming on ZEE5.