If your sole source for relationship advice, dating and sex tips is Bollywood, I don’t know what to tell you apart from that you need to pause Devdas right now.
Don’t get me wrong - I love Devdas.
It's one of my absolute favourite Bollywood films, closely followed by Om Shanti Om (2007), Mujhse Dosti Karoge (2002) and Sholay (1975), but I wouldn’t refer to any of them as sex education.
The melodramatic acting and the decadent settings (not to mention the outfits) are some of Bollywood’s key identifiers and we honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.
While Bollywood may be a great guide for the latest fashion trends, we cannot ignore the underlying euphemisms in relation to romance.
Beginning from the ridiculousness of using flowers as a metaphor for sexual intercourse, to the current oversimplification of casual sex, we know by now that Bollywood is an industry desperately trying to recover from a repressed state.
Bollywood has always relied upon human emotions to make successful films; some of them being love, fear, sadness and joy.
Romance has always been a strong underlying emotion and it has worked wonders for Bollywood films time and time again, and will likely continue to do so.
We cannot escape the irony.
An industry that financially thrives off romance films portrays elements such as relationships, dating and intimacy as dirty secrets.