Wave of raunchy new movies exposes Bollywood's sacred cow - sex

It has finally arrived in Indian cinemas - kissing, condoms, nudity and sex. A rash of new Indian films is smashing the taboo on sex that is such a powerful feature of Indian society, despite the fact that making babies appears to be the national pastime.

The films explore virgin territory - women with sexual needs, frustrated young men desperate to have sex for the first time and couples struggling to spice up their bedroom life. They also show quantities of flesh never before seen in mainstream movies.

This new raunchiness is a complete break with the customary, self-imposed, puritanism of Bollywood movies.

Until fairly recently, kissing was never shown. Showing sex even between married couples was forbidden. Nudity was outlawed, with only flashes of a woman's hips, midriff or cleavage permitted. The moment a kiss was imminent, the camera would cut, amid lush orchestral overtures, to scenes of bees pollinating flowers or shots of the Eiffel Tower.

Audiences at last year's Cannes Film Festival, where an Indian film was shown for the first time, sat bemused throughout a three-hour romance that had not a single kiss.

But things have changed this year. A new film, Kwhahish, or Desire, about a married woman's sexual dissatisfaction, includes 17 kissing scenes and shows - horror of horrors - the young couple buying condoms on their wedding night.

Even the posters for these films are unusually explicit, at least by the normal standards. Fresh Lime is about a lascivious father who covets his son's girlfriends. Its trailers show the two male leads crouched between a pair of shapely, spread-eagled legs. The trailers for Jism, which started the trend earlier this year and enjoyed box-office success, feature actress Bipasha Basu in a skimpy bikini frolicking on the beach - a far cry from the wet sari scene favoured by earlier directors.