Superstar India

by Shobhaa De

  There's something particularly ajeeb about our attitude to sex. Blame it on the masalas or sultry weather. We have yet to find our own sexual groove, by which I mean, like the Brits love kinky sex and the Swedes believe in open relationships, we don't have a cultural cliché that's representative enough of our stated position. It's facile to say ‘Oh… but look at the staggering population—a billion-plus and still multiplying.’ This only suggests that we breed. And we breed randomly, irresponsibly. We breed in ignorance.

  But what does that tell you about how we react, how we feel, what we actually do with one another in the dark? No survey is valid, since most are conducted in the big cities and the data is far from representative. Which ‘ghungatwali’ village woman is going to open up and talk candidly about her sex life to a stranger wearing polyester pants? Which village man, for that matter, will share such secrets? Most of the rampant breeding takes place outside our metros.

  ‘Cool’ city folk are generally lovers who look more longingly at their pillows than their partners. In a startling survey, the New York Times stated that 51 per cent of women professionals in New York were single. Whether or not they wished to mingle, I don't know. My guess is, they did. But as the universal lament goes ‘Mingle with whom?’

  Men haven't changed a bit. But women have. And they refuse to settle for wimps, monsters or bores. The gays obviously don't want them ‘thataway’, and the straight guys aren't worth wanting. This has become a worldwide syndrome—I mean, even Paris Hilton had difficulty finding dates, forcing her to turn celibate for a year! Taking stock is not going to be all that easy. I asked Rohini (our ruling domestic), without whom our home would come to a standstill, why she's single given her age (thirty-two). She shrugs and asks me wryly, ‘Where are the men?’ She could be Mischa Barton or Sushmita Sen. Same problem. Zero solution!

  Meet My Mrs

  This is one of our most endearing habits. Endearing and enduring. I can recall my father's law ministry colleagues coming over to our home in New Delhi way back in the 50s and shyly introducing their wives thus. The ‘Mrs’ would fold her hands and say ‘namaste’ to my father's own ‘Mrs’— my mother. I kick myself now that both parents are no more and can't answer the question I'm about to pose: How did a woman feel when introduced in this evasive way? Did she mind the fact that her first name was of no consequence to anyone? Or even that without being a man's ‘Mrs’ she was non-existent, even invisible? Or was she genuinely happy to be someone's ‘Mrs’? Rather that than being a ‘spinster’ (as unmarried women were cruelly labelled).

  In my mother's time, being a ‘Mrs’ was an end in itself. Men those days weren't self-conscious or politically correct about committing such a faux pas. They spoke naturally—as their forefathers used to. They voiced what was true in any patriarchal society—women (wives in particular) were men's possessions. Just like men owned cars, houses, tractors, bicycles, cows… they owned their ‘Mrs’. There was proprietorial pride in such an introduction. My mother didn't know she was supposed to object to such objectification, either. She was happy to go along with my father's introduction—no insult intended, none taken.

  These days, I often hear the ‘other’ version: ‘Meet my Mr’. I love it. The misters blush but rarely protest. There is this lovely, hard-working Maharashtrian journalist who whizzes around the city on a scooter, while her husband manages their young daughter, and works part-time in an office close to their suburban home. Even in his absence she always but always refers to him as her ‘Mr’. And I never fail to ask, ‘So… how is your Mr?’ If she senses traces of irony in my voice, she certainly doesn't reveal it. I say it affectionately, but also hoping she'll catch on some day that without her realizing it, the tables have been neatly turned in under ten years.

  I meet quite a few such ‘Misters’ who have no problem with either their nomenclature or their roles. In fact, it was only the other day that on old girlfriend of mine announced at the table that she'd asked her husband to quit his job and come work for her! I held my breath, knowing her husband's ego and quick temper. Since this announcement was made in the presence of several fairly important people (and after three whiskies), chances of a blowout were pretty high. To my utter delight, her husband, a retired banker, laughed and said, ‘My wife is a remarkable woman… her business is doing well. She is making good money… I might take her up on the offer.’

  I egged on my friend by asking, ‘But how much are you willing to give him in your company? Equity? Salary? What are the terms?’ She smiled, ‘I think a 35 per cent stake is pretty fair.’ My immediate response? ‘Are you mad—it's way too high.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. There was a brief pause before the husband made light of my indiscreet comment by saying, ‘I can see whose side you're on…’

  The significant thing is that attitudes have changed— and changed pretty radically. This is the same woman who has spent most of her married life being a ‘Mrs’, looking after her in-laws, raising kids and being an ideal corporate wife. Suddenly, she has come into her own and doesn't want to down-play her newly-acquired power or status. Well… good for her. The ‘Mr’ seems confident enough to share his wife's success without feeling diminished. He has himself worked hard all his life and is acknowledged as a leading finance guy in his circles. I passed him an extra portion of the delectable dessert (pistachio dacquoise)— he'd earned it, in my eyes. The best part is that nobody else at the table sniggered. Ditto, when a shrill promoter of a movie production house, boasted, ‘When I met this bloke… I said to myself, “I can either hire him or marry him.” I did the latter… and now he works for me! I guess I met both objectives in one move.’

  The consort and the con

  Ditto, again, for a professor working on a dissertation who came to meet me from a distant town in Maharashtra, accompained by her ‘Mr’, whose job it was to take pictures of the two of us in conversation, and hang on to a large bouquet of flowers, plus a box of mithai they'd carefully carried with them during their train/bus/taxi journey. The lady whipped out a long, detailed questionnaire, while the ‘Mr’ fished out an old-fashioned, bulky tape-recorder and fiddled around with the wires, testing, retesting, making sure the contraption was working. I didn't hear his voice for the two long hours the extensive interview took. Finally, it was done, and the ‘Mr’ played back the tape to ensure the machine hadn't let them down. His big grin (the first one in two hours) revealed his relief, as he mopped his brow and beamed at his sweet, earnest ‘Mrs’.

  It was time for pictures, which he diligently took from every conceivable angle. The bouquet/mithai presentation was similarly frozen on film for posterity. The only thing left was a ‘goodbye’. The ‘Mrs’ walked with a light step towards the exit, with the mister trailing. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to me. What followed broke my heart. He spoke with such sincerity and pride about his wife's ‘dedication’ and ‘commitment’. He thanked me with tears in his eyes for fulfilling his ‘Mrs's’ dream and asked for blessings. I felt small and foolish.

  Later that night I narrated the incident to my husband— my own ‘Mr’. I also told my father the story, thinking he'd understand the situation somehow. He fell silent before chuckling dismissively. ‘What a wimp,’ he finally declared, using a Marathi equivalent for ‘wimp’. This was one ‘Mr’ who'd never make the cut with my father or his generation, men who, for all their progressive thinking, exposure and education still believed strongly in the traditional roles assigned to the ‘Mrs’. As my father would often point out in a self-congratulatory way, ‘I never left your mother out while attending official functions. She was always by my side…’ Oh yes, I can recall those outings clearly. I do know my father introduced her with the ‘Meet my Mrs’ opening line. What I'll never know is how Aie reacted.

  But as he frequently reminded me of the fact that my mother accompanied him at all was a big move in his family. I think of my mother's protected life and the startling knowledge that she'd never ever ventured out on he
r own. And I compare my own mobility, travelling around the world, booking online tickets, arriving at strange destinations without knowing anyone, and somehow ‘managing’. It's hard and I don't really enjoy it. Often I feel like a big, fat pretender, a fraud.

  Power lady? Ha! If the world only knew my anxieties and fears each time I walk into an airport! It's not all that easy to shrug off years of conditioning. It's not easy to obliterate one's mother's life, circumscribed by tradition and role-playing. I suspect there's more than I care to admit of that life, deep within me. Secretely, I often fantasize that I've switched places with my mother. For a while that fantasy looks so appealing. What a ‘safe’ existence— no risks to be taken. Everything handled by the ‘Mr’. No stressing about an uncertain future. And look at my life—each day throws up something unexpected, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. Swimming in shark-infested waters, learning to negotiate, compelling myself to ‘cope’. Surely there have to be easier options? There must. Maybe, I'm longing to hear my own husband introducing me with a reticent, ‘Meet my Mrs’. And there I would be, eyes lowered, three steps behind him, smiling a perfectly controlled half-smile, speaking only when spoken to, never interrupting, never arguing, never contradicting. An obedient, well-behaved ‘Mrs’, an asset of the old-fashioned kind—quiet, non-threatening, willing to compromise, eager to please, not looking beyond the hearth of my well-run home, forgetting about the enticing world out there… the opportunities and attractions that still make me slightly breathless when I think of them.

  Brazil! Barbados! Oh… Buenos Aires… dancing the tango with Al Pacino, learning belly dancing in Cairo, swimming in the Bosphorus, dining in Moscow with a mafia hit-man, smoking in an opium den in Shanghai, bungee-jumping… para-sailing… jet-skiing. When I start on this trip, there's no stopping the images, there's no time to waste… that's when my iPod rescues me. Like right now. I drown myself in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's dhadkan and the pain becomes easier to bear… ‘Dulhe ka sehra suhana lagta hai,’ he sings, and I can see a newly-minted ‘Mr’, with his ‘Mrs’. It brings a smile to my lips. But the tears in my eyes are equally real. I'll never be that ‘Mrs’. And I don't know whether that's a blessing or a curse!

  Indians love festivals

  ‘Holi Hai…’ Yes it's true. We celebrate something or the other on an everyday basis. Have festival, will enjoy. This has little to do with our booming economy, or the fact that Young India has lots of chillar to splurge on some festivity or the other. It was always like this and so it shall remain. Foreigners find it difficult to appreciate the number of public holidays we enjoy in a calendar year. To us, even this staggeringly high number seems hopelessly inadequate. We are forever agitating for more ‘sectional’ chhuttis, more ‘optional’ days off. The reasons are always the same. ‘We are celebrating…’ Nobody asks ‘what’? Maybe ‘Mahashivratri’? Why not?

  It is taken for granted that it is an important family occasion that cannot be skipped by a single member. Kids bunk school, adults bunk office, the elderly wait to eat laddoos and the party gets underway. Compare that to the fixed holidays in the West—there's X'mas, of course, that overwhelms the rest of the world and sweeps everybody along. And there's Easter, Lent and two National Days (4th of July and… and… Guy Fawkes? Don't know, don't care).

  But, as I write this on the eve of Holi, I can feel my heart leaping… I like to think I loathe Holi, but I know I'll get drawn into the insane revelry, regardless. Bollywood toned down its Holi madness in 2007, with the Bachchans cancelling their annual colour-orgy, since the senior Mrs Bachchan was ailing in hospital. But in the rest of the country, the rowdies were ready with their pichkaris and gaalis, their bhang and thandai craziness. What is quite astonishing about Holi is the way society sanctions total abandon, verbal and physical abuse, outright leching, pawing, groping—all in the name of celebrating a spring festival. It is the closest we come to the Mardi Gras in Brazil or New Orleans. There are countless theories and explanations as to why we smear colour so liberally on each other during Holi, but I don't buy those explanations. It is simply about catharsis and an annual release.

  For one day of the year, people forget to behave themselves and it's vastly amusing to watch staid, dull individuals occupy other far more colourful skins as they dance uninhibitedly with complete strangers, down several glasses of bhang and get drenched to the skin.

  Oh… that wet saree strikes again! What's it about a woman's buttocks covered by a thin, diaphanous veil of fabric that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination and drives society crazy? Film-makers from Raj Kapoor to Ram Gopal Verma repeatedly showcase their heroines’ assets in clinging, wet sarees, film after film. Some refer to this as the ultimate Wet Dream for sex-starved Indians, and I suspect they're right on target. Holi parties are incomplete without a pool of brightly coloured water into which women are physically thrown, feigning fright and embarrassment. They squeal with delight and scream orgasmically, as strangers pick them up, kicking, and ‘protesting’, before dunking the ladies into the inviting tank. Once thoroughly drenched, the mermaids are ready to jiggle and wiggle to standard Bollywood hits like ‘Rang barse…’ As the afternoon progresses and the bhang kicks in, one sees some strange and bewildering sights— couplings that are as weird as they're unexpected. But as the spirit of Holi dictates—all is conveniently forgotten the very next day after the nasha of the potent bhang comes down. Raat gayee, baat gayee. Convenient! The once inebriated idiots sensibly avoid eye contact and get back into the sober, boring, predictable world in which every married woman is a ‘Bhabhiji’ and every married guy is a ‘Bhaisaab’. These are but a few charming hypocrisies of our amazing society. We need these annual rituals, or else, we'd all go mad.

  Holi is an example of how bizarrely the Pleasure works in our lives. I thought of that a few days before Holi, when the moon was three-quarters full and high in the sky, providing a stunning ‘prop’ to the thirteenth-century Sun Temple at Konarak. My husband and I had just been taken through a crash course in erotica by our very enthusiastic guide called Upendra. After a weak attempt at explaining the ‘deep, philosophical, spiritual’ aspects of this magnificent monument, he'd wisely decided to zero in on the explicitly depicted sex acts in the frescoes that dominate the temple walls and have intrigued scholars for centuries. Upendra looked at me knowingly, winked at my husband conspiratorially, before stage-whispering, ‘All positions, all combinations, all postures… man-woman, lesbian ladies, two men with one woman, women with animals, men with animals… here it is possible to see all sex acts.’ I tried to stare but in an ‘academic’ sort of way, more than aware of the fact that Upendra himself was staring intently at me! He sidled up to point out a panel which depicted a dog performing cunnilingus on a woman. ‘That is ancient way of preventing infection to woman's private parts…’ Now, that was a new one! ‘Ancient times… not possible for infected woman to go to a doctor… nor another woman… to show dirty private parts… secret thing. So… woman call dog. Dog lick her privacy properly. Dog's saliva having antibiotic… woman's private part cured… nobody knowing. Secret kept.’ Oh God! What would happen to those divine apsaras if the local rishi got to know they'd been up to tricks and contracted some unmentionable STD? Would the rishi shoot the man… or the dog? Upendra's earnest explanations of the doggie position were still better.

  ‘Man behaving like a kutta… see… doing kutta things… I wanted to tell him men the world over behave like kuttas, most are kuttas… but said to myself, ‘Jaane do…’ why deliver a bhaashan on feminism in such a beautiful setting?

  As we drove off to Jagannath Puri, my heart was still in Konarak, wondering what those magic-fingered sculptors were thinking while carving the inventive sex tableaux. A local lecturer had provided three theories. Theory number one: Since the temple took twelve long years to build, carving copulating couples kept the stone-cutters happy! If they couldn't do it, they could sculpt it! Theory number two: It was the great king's attempt to encourage his subjects to
go forth and multiply, since there was a serious population problem (low) at the time. Theory number three: Sex equals enlightenment. Devotees who could leave carnal desire at the gates of the temple, after getting an eyeful, were the ones who'd reach God. It all sounded like bunkum to me. But his softly-accented Oriya-English was enchanting enough for people to buy all those loony theories wholesale!

  An hour later we were at one of Hinduism's most revered sthaans—the centuries-old Jagannath Mandir, which is one of the few temples that ban the entry of non-Hindus. I recalled an earlier visit when I'd been mistaken for Benazir Bhutto's sister (I was wearing a pink Ritu Kumar salwar kameez, no bindi). Gheraoed by aggressive temple pandas demanding I recite the Gayatri Mantra and reveal my gotra, I'd fled, swearing never to return. But here I was, surrounded by fawning temple officials who'd seen me on some TV show. Our party was escorted straight into the sanctum sanctorum, while tribals in tattered sarees were pushed around and harangued to part with the few coins they possessed.

  ‘For bhog, madam, for God… not for us… never for us,’ an oily panda with bleached forelocks and a rakish smile told me, while adjusting his low-slung dhoti. He looked ready to audition as an extra in a Bhojpuri film. There were hundred of widows, clapping in a desultory way, as the evening aarti was in progress, with loud chanting and clanging of bells. I'd just seen Deepa Mehta's Water, and found the entire scene with the widows most troubling. ‘Nobody touches them, madam, they are here for darshan purpose only… peoples are feeding rice everyday… peoples giving much charity… no problems for ladies.’ The world's biggest ‘rice market’ located in the temple courtyard was crowded all right—gigantic mud vessels filled to the brim with cooked rice were being steadily emptied by a constant stream of the faithful buying bhog and consuming it greedily. We were urged to eat freshly-made rabdi with greasy parathas. ‘God's food… not to refuse,’ the rakish panda said, addressing every word to my chest.