It exists. Definitely. But what is its shape? Is it drawn by consent or coercion? Are its accusers real or manufactured? Is it about pleasure or oppression? And how large is its presence? LEO MIRANI tries to flesh out the face of the casting couch in Bollywood

If it’s all just rumour, it’s lived long enough now to deserve an honorary degree as fact. If it isn’t, it’s a many splendoured and unsplendoured thing. The gateway to stardom and more. The road to hell and worse. For the third party — the voyeur — a vicarious engagement. All depending on how it went on the casting couch.

Does it exist? Really? What does it look like, the Casting Couch? Keep imagining. In Bollywood, fevered as it is by the junky-fix requirements of ambition and inspiration, glamour and greed, mythmaking and megalomania, they don’t have the time to ponder its shape. A hotel room bed, a pushback studio chair, the makeup caravan car, the backseat of an SUV, a corner on-location. Whatever. Wherever. Sex, casual, passing, persistent, determined, is just one of those things written into the script. Demanded. Offered. Promised. Procured. Needed. Available. Perhaps, suffered. It happens. Like it, lump it, fight it, the choice is the maker’s.

And so you have to hand it to the film industry. Even in slack periods when the films being churned out aren’t particularly interesting or involving, the off-screen peccadilloes of the industry keep you rivetted.

The latest scandal to hit the headlines is the story of Preeti Jain and Madhur Bhandarkar. Jain has accused Bhandarkar of raping her 16 times over five years even while admitting that he never physically assaulted her. Bhandarkar, for his part, says that she was just another actress after him for a role.

The two were introduced by a journalist in 1999 and according to Jain, Bhandarkar coerced her into sex on the pretext of marriage and big roles in his movies. The first time this happened — May 1999 according to Jain - Bhandarkar was still a nobody in the industry, having made just one film that had bombed badly.

Bhandarkar thereafter allegedly raped her 16 times at hotels and friends’ houses, up until December 2003, with “a fresh incident in June” this year. The alleged June incident, according to Jain, was the last straw and the one that she says convinced her to go to the cops.

The press has gone to town with the story, but unlike other rape cases where the sympathies would lie with the woman, Bhandarkar has been made out to be the victim in this case.

It’s about sub-text. Jain’s statements have been self-contradictory and as film critic Deepa Gahlot puts it, “idiotic”. The contention is that how can anyone be repeatedly raped over five years? Says Jain in her defence, “When I say he raped me, that does not mean physical assault. It simply means he was doing everything by applying threats to me and my parents’ life.”