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Tue, 19th Feb 2008   Kolkata: A commercial to promote a brand of men's innerwear hit Indian television screens in March last year and five months later it was forced to go off air following a ban by the Centre on grounds of vulgarity.
However, by then the punch line, Yeh to bada toing hai was a hit and opened doors for the model in Bollywood.
With the lead role in Halla Bol already her kitty, the Billo Rani item girl, Sana Khan, is now focusing on her career in acting and owes that to the commercial.
"Forget about the ban and people taking out morchas against me and burning my posters in Bombay. At the end of it people from the creative field have loved it," says Sana Khan.
Unfazed by the initial hurdle, the company launched the sequel to the advertisement on Monday.
Shot in the exotic locales of Malaysia with the same model and a group of Orangutans, the commercial cost the company nearly Rs 70 lakh. That's about twice the figure it invested for its previous venture.
Described as a surrogate for men's sexuality the advertisement is naughty, to say the least.
The ad filmmaker, Pushpinder Singh says, "I am of the opinion that if you do not offend anyone's sensibilities, if you entertain, if you are merely naughty you usually end up doing a good job."
The company says it's prepared for an eventuality of another censure, but it still wants to risk that possibility for the sake of creativity.
The glare of Government censure set against the aspiration to surpass previous creativity seems to be one of the underlying tensions in today's ad filmmaking, where sexual innuendos are only a means to strike at conservative feelings.  | 
