REVIEW RASBHARI (Web Series)

Producers- Nikhil Nagesh Bhatt, Tanveer Bookwala, Shantanu Shrivastava

Director- Nikhil Bhat

Star Cast-Swara Bhaskar, Ayushmaan Saxena, Pradhuman Singh, Neelu Kohli, Chittaranjan Tripathi and Rashmi Agdekar

Genre- Social

Rating-**

Clichéd & Stereotyped!

Jyothi Venkatesh

The eight episode web series Rasbhari streaming on the OTT Amazon Prime Video belongs to the erotica series that will appeal to those who are very conservative by heart as it is a rare web series that never gets crass and sleazy. It does succeed to a reasonable extent in making the theme of sexual liberation in today’s times and awakening a subject to seriously ponder upon, it has an open-ended climax that leaves one flummoxed as to what to expect next.

Basically, the series revolves around Nand Kishore Tyagi (Ayushmaan Saxena), a teenage boy, who is infatuated with his English teacher Shanoo Madam (Swara Bhasker). Ironically, though he is seen as a hard core casanova by his closest friends, his girl classmates consider him to be a harmless ‘brother’. It's provocative but at the same time, also a half baked series that deals with the adolescent curiosities of both genders set in Meerut.

Nand Kishore has set a target for himself: that he wants to lose his virginity before high school ends and having heard of the sexual erotic tales of the newly moved in neighbor Shanoo Madam, he implores his dad to enroll him too as the teacher’s student.Pushpa (Neelu Kohli), Nand’s mother, has her own kitty party, at which her friends gather to talk gleefully about their husbands’ waning interest in their respective wives, among other things.

It is quite difficult to believe that Shanoo has an alter ego in the attractive form of the sexy siren Rasbhari, who is mystery personified and adds the right amount of sensuality to the story with her presence, but the writer fails to justify her metamorphosis and it looks like she has been created by the writer only because as Shanoo, she has nothing much to offer sexually other than being an attractive as well as strict school teacher.

Swara Bhaskar is good as the teacher Shanoo but uncomfortably falls short as the seductive Rashberry when it comes to seducing the males with alacrity. Ayushman is good as Nand while Rashmi Agadkar excels as the adolescent Priyanka who is in love with Nand.Chittaranjan Tripathi is brilliant as Nand’s father while Neetu Kohli is good as usual. As Shanoo/Rasbhari’s husband, Pradhuman Singh is passable, though we cannot say the same thing about the web series which is stereotyped and clichéd and fails to pass the litmus test by neither addressing a serious sexual issue nor trying to be titillating