WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE MYBABY?

Bollywood hit Vicky Donor provokes a flood of inquiries on sperm donation and busts a few myths along the way

Jand ohn Abraham’s rib- tickling blockbuster Vicky Donor, besides packing multiplexes, may soon be prompting ‘ house full’ signs outside sperm banks and fertility clinics across the country. The film, made on a budget of Rs 5 crore, has grossed Rs 35.50 crore to date, and provoked a rush of inquiries about sperm donation inspired by the fictional Vicky Arora’s spectacular success at marketing his ‘ little cells’ and the joy he eventually brings to dozens of childless couples.

“It’s unbelievable,” says Dr G. K. Bedi, 50, a Chandigarh- based assisted reproductive technology expert who has primarily had to rely on semen samples from established sperm banks in Delhi for her patients. Like Bedi, Dr Nainaben Patel’s telephone has also been ringing constantly. “After the film released, I have received nearly a dozen calls from youngsters of affluent families,” says the fertility specialist from Anand, Gujarat. Says Dr Himanshu Bavishi of the Ahmedabad- based Bavishi Fertility Institute, a leading in vitro fertilisation ( IVF) expert who has helped set up two semen banks in Mumbai and Delhi: “The film’s social message is significant because it is spurring people from many families to donate sperm. In genetic terms, it is an important development because this would lead to good progeny.”

Experts see Vicky Donor as milestone cinema whose impact has gone far beyond anything Abraham, the film’s producer or its director Shoojit Sircar could have ever envisioned. It has provoked surprisingly enthusiastic conversations on a little- spoken- about subject like voluntary sperm donation. This, at a time when lifestyle diseases and stress are causing diminished sperm counts and motility amid many men in their reproductive age. Bedi says at least one half of the infertility cases referred to her clinic are a consequence of the “male factor”. She says “50 per cent of infertile men are not producing any sperm cells at all. And the other half suffers from lowered sperm counts and low motility”.

Ahmedabad engineering student Ashish Lodhani, 21, says the final scene of the film depicting the dramatic faceto- face between Vicky and the scores of couples he had made happy parents out of, motivated him to call a local fertility clinic. “I want to be the man who removes the tears of childless couples,” he says. Similarly moved, Chandigarh hotelier Brijeshwar Singh Guron, 38, who is still looking for his dream bride, sees sperm donation as akin to blood donation. “Donating blood helps save a precious life. Sperm donation would help create new life,” he says.

“I know just how difficult things were when my wife and I were trying unsuccessfully to have a baby,” recalls Harkirat Ahluwalia, 38, who runs Citrus County, a rural homestay off Hoshiarpur’s Chauni village. His wife Biya has since been blessed with two healthy boys and Ahluwalia says after Vicky Donor, he is “wide open” to the idea of sperm donation. “I have hardcore Punjabi cells and my boys are proof,” he proudly declares.

However, while the film has drawn enthusiastic donors, the absence of a regulatory mechanism is queering the pitch for many serious players in the business. “The business of sperm and egg donation, or surrogacy for that