Rakul Preet Singh, Sumeet Vyas Shine in This Much-Needed Story

However, the men in her family do not believe in using contraceptives and the manager at the local clinic calls it ‘ashleel’ (filthy). Sanya finds out that her sister-in-law has gone through a couple of abortions and miscarriages because her husband doesn’t want to use a condom and has put her life at risk with the daily use of birth control pills. Even Sanya needs to make a project of sorts to make her husband Rishi understand the importance of safe sex. From there she gets the idea of teaching the women of her town the importance of male contraceptives.

While the ball is in her court for a long time, things quickly go south once the word is out that she is a condom tester. She is shunned from her in-laws’ house and her attempts to teach people about safe sex go in vain. For most of the part, the script depends on humour to put across the points of the character. Without bringing forward the ground reality of the women in a grim manner, the film takes a very jolly approach to teach important things. For instance, we see a group of women happily singing the slogan “If you want our love, you need to accept condoms” once they decide they will reject their husbands’ advances if they are not using contraceptives.

The film doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to giving these messages. Right from the first scene, when the manager of the contraceptive company tells his former employee that the work they do is not shameful but a life-saving one, we know where it is headed. And that makes it an engaging watch as well.

Rakul Preet has always been good at playing the happy-go-lucky girl next door, who can also hold her own and believes in what she does. She is thoroughly complemented by Sumeet Vyas, who plays her confused yet supportive husband. Rajesh Tailang, as the conservative brother-in-law, who despite being a biology teacher, asks his students to skip the reproductive system chapter and focus on the digestive system chapter, is very convincing in what he does.

While promoting the importance of the above-mentioned points, the film also doesn’t forget to address the problem at its roots. Teenagers with wrong or no knowledge of sex often grow up to be adults who miss out on these safe practices because it never strikes them that they are going wrong. When a teenage boy asks Sanya whether his girlfriend can get pregnant just by kissing him, we might be letting out a laugh, but we know this is a question that people actually have had, outside the world of fiction.