Vishal Bhardwaj has revealed that his segment in Netflix’s Lust Stories 3 was shaped by 19th-century literature and the writings of French-American author Anais Nin, with the story following an Urdu literature professor in 1987 Hyderabad who discovers a hidden voice through erotic writing.
The Literary Roots of Bhardwaj’s Story
Filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj says when he set out to make his short for the anthology Lust Stories 3, the literary influences of the 19th century became his primary source of inspiration to talk about desire through the perspective of a woman. The director, known for his adaptations of William Shakespeare’s tragedies such as Maqbool, Omkara, and Haider, has directed a segment featuring real-life actor-couple Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth.
In an interview with PTI, Bhardwaj explained the philosophical foundation of his story. “If you bring poetry in lust, it becomes love, that’s what poetry does. Sometimes we’ve lust in sublime and we deceive ourselves saying this is love, but actually this is lust. A lot of times, we have so many moral obligations and pressures that even to garb a relationship, we say this is love, but actually this is lust,” he said.
He referenced the late poet Bashir Badr’s couplet, “Tu Mohabbat ki tarah piglegi aur main mar jaunga hawas ki tarah,” to talk about the transient nature of lust. “Literature somehow seeps into my work because I’m also a student of literature,” the filmmaker added.
How Ruskin Bond Led Him to Anais Nin
Bhardwaj revealed that his journey to Anais Nin began through a conversation with author Ruskin Bond. In an exclusive interaction with Mashable India, the director shared that he had been researching literary erotica when Bond mentioned the French writer to him.
“Ruskin Bond had once mentioned a French writer to me, Anaïs Nin, and in her foreword, she spoke about how she became a celebrated erotica writer despite also being a serious literary writer,” Bhardwaj said. He explained that Nin wrote about a group of writers who were approached by a publisher who wanted them to write erotica because it sold better than conventional literature. The publisher offered them more money per page, and they were lured into writing it.
“That became the premise that inspired me,” Bhardwaj stated. He further elaborated in his PTI interview: “I was looking to find someone in the literary world because there should be some literary value to the story so that it will become profound. I learnt that she was a major poet and literary writer. And because she was short of money, a publisher offered her one dollar per page if she wrote erotica for him. So, that’s where this character Saira came from”.
The filmmaker added, “I felt I could model the character on her, where she says you can find literature even in the darkest and cheapest themes”.
Saira, Badru and the World of 1987 Hyderabad
Set against the culturally rich backdrop of 1987 Hyderabad, Bhardwaj’s segment follows Saira, an Urdu literature professor, who draws on the literary world to express her feelings for her husband, a homeopathic doctor. Saira is described as a woman who uses writing to express her feelings for her husband, played by Siddharth.
Bhardwaj placed his story in Hyderabad because he was drawn to the city’s distinctive dialect and cultural texture and wanted to capture it on film. The setting of 1987 was also a deliberate choice, reflecting an era before the advent of VHS and DVDs when young people were introduced to romance and desire through books such as Mills & Boon, the pulp fiction of Uttar Pradesh-based writer Mastram, and magazines like Debonair.
The director explained the evolution of the character’s motivation. “Initially, when we were writing the woman’s character, the motivation was simply money. She comes from a middle-class family and wants to fulfil a promise she and her husband made to their son about taking him on a holiday. But then we thought, what if we went beyond money? What if she found something that gave her a reason to write beyond the financial incentive? That’s how the story evolved”.
Real-Life Couple Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth
The segment features Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth, who are married in real life, marking their first project together after marriage. Given their real-life relationship, the assumption might be that intimate scenes would be easier for them, but the actors said that is not always the case.
“Nothing came from us being a real-life couple. Even for a couple in real life, there is a camera on you, we are showing intimacy and we have to make it real. We forgot who we were. We were just Badru and Saira, and their dreams, imaginations, desire, love, innocence, and all this comes through the director,” Hydari said.
Siddharth, who has spent over two decades acting opposite female actors, said treating Hydari differently simply because she was his wife would amount to a “betrayal” of his profession. The two actors first worked together on the 2021 Telugu-language romantic action-drama film Maha Samudram.
The Anthology and Its Four Directors
Lust Stories 3 brings together four acclaimed filmmakers: Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra, and Vishal Bhardwaj. The anthology premiered on Netflix on September 18, 2026.
The ensemble cast includes Radhika Apte, Konkona Sen Sharma, Aditi Rao Hydari, Radhika Madan, Sana Thampi, Vijay Varma, Abhishek Banerjee, Siddharth, Ali Fazal, and Gurfateh Pirzada. The film is produced by RSVP and Flying Unicorn Entertainment.
Bhardwaj spoke about the creative freedom the anthology format provided. “What fascinates me about desire is how deeply it is connected to imagination – to the stories we tell ourselves, and sometimes the stories we are afraid to tell out loud,” he said in a statement. “I was drawn to the idea of exploring that space through a character finding her own voice and discovering what happens when that voice reaches beyond her. There’s humour, mischief and emotion in that journey, but also questions about identity, expression and who gets to tell stories about desire”.
The director also noted that being part of an anthology with three such distinctive filmmakers was a “wonderful creative experience, and Netflix gave all of us the freedom to tell these stories in our own way”.
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A Story That Steals the Show
Early reviews of Lust Stories 3 have singled out Bhardwaj’s segment for praise. India Today noted that Bhardwaj “finally gives Lust Stories 3 the texture and complexity the anthology promises”. The review added that his segment, seemingly set in the 1980s, stars Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth in what has been described as the most emotionally complex story of the four.
Another review from Koimoi observed that Bhardwaj “switches the zone to handle the most complicated story in this anthology”. The filmmaker’s ability to blend literary depth with the exploration of desire has been highlighted as a standout element of the anthology.
Lust Stories 3 continues the franchise’s tradition of bringing together India’s leading directors to explore love, lust, relationships, and repressed desire through deeply personal, contemporary lenses. Bhardwaj’s contribution, rooted in literary history and set against the cultural fabric of 1987 Hyderabad, offers a distinctive perspective on the many shades of human connection.
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