India in Love

by Ira Trivedi

  For Shammi, finding girls was never difficult, especially of late. Monstrous call-centres have been mushrooming around Gurgaon, and there has been an influx of young girls from around the country who have moved here, free for the first time from the prying eyes of parents and college matrons. These girls frequent the nightclub on the weekends (it doubles up as a hookah bar during the week). Most of these young girls find DJ Shammi irresistible, and he is spoilt for choice.

  It is not so easy for Suganda. She recognizes the pitfalls of being older. She has lost her figure after the birth of the twins, and her breasts too have lost their firmness, no matter how many chest exercises she does. She realizes that she will never find ‘true love’ with the men she meets through online dating sites and chat rooms.

  John, the American with the eyes of a celestial blue, was the second man that Suganda had ever had sex with. The count has gone up since then, but she refused to reveal how many. Her experience with John was so revelatory that it bordered on the mystical. It’s not like she didn’t like sex with Shammi, it’s just that it had become so old, such a routine, and it was profoundly non-erotic. John, on the other hand, was foreign, mysterious and strange in the sexiest of ways. John performed hours of cunnilingus on her, a first-of-a-kind experience, something her husband had always thought of as vile and obscene. She found her first experience of cunnilingus to be extremely pleasurable, and she felt stimulated like never before. Suganda tells me that sex is different with every person, not better or worse, just different. What she loves most, even more than the sex, is what comes with the affair: the discovery, the suspense of the chase, and the thrill of the illicit romance.

  Shammi and her husband haven’t had sex for a while, almost two years now.

  ‘Isn’t that a crucial part of a marriage?’ I ask.

  ‘Our relationship isn’t about that anymore. It’s about family,’ she says thoughtfully.

  She adds, a little defensively now, ‘You’ll know once you get married what it feels like to be with the same person, night in and night out. We share a bed, a bathroom, we are not conscious when I am having my monthlies or when he has gas. Sex is just an act between us, it doesn’t mean much anymore. With other people it is definitely more exciting.’

  I am curious about the dynamics of an open marriage. There doesn’t seem to be any tension between husband and wife, not in the weeks that I have known them. Instead there seems to be a mutual tolerance, and a comfortable companionship. But I could also see that nuances were lost. They didn’t joke around, not the way Garima and Suketu had. The inflections were missing, the small things that built up into big things, the kiss on the cheek, the holding of hands, the arm around the shoulder, all seemed to be gone.

  One day, as I am playing with the twins, a shrieking Suganda runs into the room, telling me that Shammi has been in an accident, and we must go to the hospital immediately. I freeze with fear. I have grown to like the hulking Shammi, so gentle with the twins, sweet to his wife, and who has welcomed me into his life without any suspicions.

  Suganda, her two tailors and I pile into her car, and zip to Medanta Hospital. There are people everywhere. In India, guest policies are never followed, and when any member of the family is admitted, protocol prescribes that the entire family camp out till the patient is discharged. A few strange looking hipsters lurk outside Shammi’s room. I guess that they are from the club. Apparently, Shammi was driving to the club, when a stray dog came in the way. He swerved his bike to avoid the dog, lost his balance, and fell into a ditch. Suganda is weeping uncontrollably. ‘A dog! A bloody dog!’ whimpers Suganda through her tears. ‘You know how Shammi loves dogs. That bloody dog! That fucking mongrel. He got away. He is probably enjoying life right now, and poor Shammi…’ Her face suffuses with grief.

  At that moment the doctor appears, and since a hyperventilating Suganda is in no state to talk, I step forward. The doctor declares that Shammi is alive and well. He has broken three ribs and his right leg is in a cast. He has also suffered a head injury, but it is nothing to worry about. The doctor’s prognosis is that Shammi is fine save the broken bones, and will be discharged within a few days.

  A few hours later, two sets of worried-looking parents come in from Haryana: Shammi’s from Rohtak and Suganda’s from Panipat. Suganda immediately covers her head with her chunni and touches her in-laws’ feet in the traditional way. She speaks in hushed, quiet tones, so different from her usual manner of speaking and fawns over her in-laws, pressing her mother-in-law’s forehead and her father-in-law’s feet. The modern Suganda of the open marriage and of internet adultery is suddenly transformed into the shy bahu, who refers to Shammi respectfully in the third person as ‘jee,’ or ‘woh’. I find Suganda’s behaviour odd, to say the least. It is as if she has a dual personality, one side of which rebels against societal norms and pressures by indulging in illicit love affairs, while the other side plays the obsequious, traditional bahu that she has been brought up to be.

  A few days later I visit a recuperating Shammi at home. He is sitting on the sofa in the living room, his broken leg propped up on a pile of pillows. He is surrounded on all sides by piles of colourful saris and is flipping through a copy of Femina. Suganda is fussing about him, wearing an infelicitous combination of a lacy red nightie and rubber slippers. Ram and Shyam are installed in each crook of their father’s arms slurping on Maggi noodles and watching cartoons.

  Shammi and I fall into easy conversation. He talks a lot about the past. His life has been confusing and disordered, and I gather that he is trying to recover some semblance of normalcy.

  He tells me in a ruminative vein, ‘You know, during my recent near-death experience, I realized something. Actually, I realized many things.’

  He reaches out to Suganda and squeezes her hand. He hugs one of the twins tightly to his chest. He is rethinking his DJ career. Maybe he could get into real estate or the stock market or maybe even help Suganda with her flourishing business.

  ‘After the accident, when I came so close to dying, so close to losing them, I realized how few things matter in life, and that my family is really all that I have.’

  THE SWING

  What aroused Vishal most were sexual acts he craved but were not available to him in real life with his wife, such as fellatio, which his wife did not enjoy giving and anal sex, which she found dirty and painful. Vishal didn’t feel right paying for sex, he wanted to be with ‘normal, everyday’ people: the kind girl in the next cubicle, his neighbour’s buxom wife, and especially his elder brother’s sweet-scented, fresh-faced wife. Vishal admitted that he had once picked up a pillow-lipped, saggy-breasted prostitute wearing a sparkly red salwaar-kameez, her talon-like nails varnished black at GB Road but quickly deposited her back with a 100 tip when he imagined all the potential diseases she could be carrying.

  Vishal thought back with nostalgia to the six months he had spent in Texas—sent by his IT company for a project—where he spent the icy nights carousing in the streets, exploring adventurous orgies advertised online, and titillating swing clubs, where he was pleased that women found him dashing and exotic.

  As he lay next to his sleeping wife, whom he loved dearly, and desperately wanted to have intercourse with, his member swelling underneath the drawstrings of his pajamas, he had a brilliant revelation. Why couldn’t he himself start a swingers’ club? He had extensive experience, and he remained an active participant in online sex chat groups. Seeing the strong online interest, and given his foreign connections, which he steadfastly maintained, he could easily put a group together.

  He looked at his wife, sleeping as peacefully as a child next to him, and stroked her silky hair. Neelam, though she didn’t like to have sex often, liked to watch pornography. They had been married six years ago in an arranged-cum-love marriage. His parents had seen her advertisement in a newspaper, and as soon as he had glimpsed the slender woman with the gentle eyes, he knew that he would marry her.

  On my quest to understa
nd modern love, I had explored a live-in relationship which rejected marriage and an open marriage where each partner explored their sexuality individually while maintaining their marriage. The third and most radical idea to me was that of swingers’ clubs where couples explored their sexual selves not just with each other but with other people as well. I had come across swingers’ clubs in the upper echelons of society, but it was not unexpected that a Western-educated and influenced elite would be involved in these sorts of lascivious activities. What was surprising was how these ideas had spread to other levels of society. The internet revealed that all of India’s metro cities had multiple swingers’ clubs.

  I find Vishal Chaudhry on the internet. He is a short, worried-looking, rotund engineer, who works in the back-office of an American IT firm in Delhi. He and I are interviewing a fresh batch of candidates for his swingers’ club one steamy, humid morning, and trying to keep our cool by sipping on iced coffee. Vishal has a laptop displaying an Excel sheet on which he intends to rank couples under heads such as ‘confidence’, ‘looks’, and ‘the X-factor’. He has already sent in questionnaires to interested couples, which he has studied carefully. This process is tried and tested, and over the two years that Vishal has run this club, he claims to have interviewed over a hundred couples. Vishal keeps in touch with an American friend of his from his days in Texas—Cherry, who runs a swingers’ club there. She gives him tips and advice on how to break into the Indian market though she has never been to India. Vishal has agreed to let me witness this meeting only on one condition—that I tell people that I too am a participant in his nocturnal rendezvous. Basically, I am being used as a prop to attract people to Vishal’s club, which he has named ‘The Swing’, after his Texan favourite. I have negotiated with Vishal and told him that I will agree to his conditions only if he agrees to mine—I want to attend the next swingers’ party as an observer. One of Vishal’s most stringent rules is that only couples are allowed to be a part of the club. Singles are strictly not allowed, except for him. He allows couples to participate only after screening them, to make sure that both members want to participate of their own volition because he has had a few unpleasant experiences when husbands forced their wives into swinging. ‘It’s a highly unpleasant experience, especially for me,’ he says with a look of disdain. ‘Even one nervous wreck can ruin the mood of the party. That’s all it takes. One time this lady started crying, and that was the end of the party. After that, I’ve been very strict.’

  Today Vishal will interview three couples who have applied online to be a part of the next club night. At 3:15, our first couple walks into Cafe Coffee Day. Vishal is polite and curt, never over-friendly. He says that he has to maintain an air of professionalism because people are scared. The top fear in people’s minds is that they will be filmed. A few years ago, a scandal broke when explicit footage of two students of Delhi’s Modern School having sex on the school campus, shot by a mobile phone, was circulated extensively on the internet. A fracas followed, involving the national media, parliament, and the right-wing Hindu party, the Shiv Sena, demanding that the government ban mobile phones in schools. According to Vishal, the greatest fear for prospective club members is that Vishal may be filming their activities, or that he runs some sort of seedy sex racket.

  ‘That is why it is necessary for them to see nice people like you and I, so that they understand that the club has high standards,’ says Vishal, adopting a sort of professorial air.

  The young couple that sit in front of us couldn’t be more different from each other. The boy, twenty-three, is craggy-featured with a thin, wispy moustache that looks like a calligrapher’s mistake. The girl is a lot more attractive in comparison, with small, pleasant features, and long hair that is black, smooth, and so shiny that it practically reflects the light. They have been dating for eight years, and are engaged to be married. Both work for large corporations in Delhi. They read about Vishal’s club in an online chat room and want to further explore their sexuality.

  Vishal seems to be delighted, and he whispers to me that they are his ‘ideal couple’. He has dealt with many rascals and posers in his club, and now he can really tell those who are genuinely interested from those with perverted interests. Vishal’s voice rises with excitement as he speaks to the couple.

  No one actually has intercourse during these parties, Vishal explains. Sometimes people use the club as a pick-up joint. To avoid this problem, only couples in serious relationships are allowed into his club, and they are given a space to sexually experiment with each other and also with other couples through a variety of techniques that he has learnt in the US. The club is free at the moment, but he encourages donations.

  There seemed to be a lot of rules for something that was meant to be all about freedom.

  The young couple listen excitedly and only ask if there would be any recordings, to which Vishal declares that everything is extremely private and no cell phones are allowed in his club meetings.

  After the couple leave, and while we wait for our next interviewees, I ask Vishal why, if couples didn’t swap partners, or have intercourse, there is any reason to have the club.

  Vishal explains that young couples wishing to overcome boredom could be stimulated while preserving the ‘sanctity’ of their relationship. Middle-aged couples could once again, or perhaps for the first time (since many of them are in arranged marriages) experience the élan of youthful courtship. These same people could then divert this awakened sexual energy into their own relationships. When men saw their wives arousing other men, they would become aroused by her themselves, while women, particularly those who had been married at a young age, could experience with a new man the feeling of being desired. For many couples, according to Vishal, his club could reinvigorate a dead marriage.

  The second couple, a middle-aged pair, walk in. They had written in saying they were thirty, but they seem to be closer to forty-five. The woman has a pockmarked face and thinning hair, she wears a loose kaftan and tight jeans. The older man has short hair, a gentle smile, and close-set eyes with a slightly somnolent expression. They are both shy, and despite their age, seem to be far more nervous than the previous couple. They don’t seem to really understand why they are here. To stimulate conversation, the unflappable Vishal asks them about their hobbies. Neither says anything at first, and after a while the man stutters, ‘Watching TV’. Vishal cringes.

  During interviews Vishal says he always asks about hobbies. If a candidate says ‘watching TV or movies’, or ‘surfing the net’, he does not approve. He considers that to be boring, lacking a sense of curiosity or adventure. He is pleased when he hears that the couple reads books or travels. These are his favourites, and the people he aspires to convert into swingers. Travelling, especially, seems to be a quality that translated well into club membership.

  After they leave, I ask him if he thinks they would qualify.

  ‘If I don’t have enough couples, maybe. They are too old, and they scare the younger ones off. Which girl would want to pleasure her boyfriend in front of a man who looks like her father?’

  Next to arrive is a couple who speak to Vishal mostly in Hindi. They seem to be the least affluent of the lot. Dilip works at a McDonald’s as a senior staff member. His wife, Isha is a tiny, gnome-like woman, who smiles at me a lot. She has clearly dressed up for the interview, and appears to be floating in a sparkly, yellow sari. She hardly speaks or understands English, but when Vishal asks her if she would like to participate in the swinging club, she just giggles and nods her head. Her husband nudges her and smiles, ‘Yeh to tera idea tha’ (This was your idea). She had found Vishal’s website while surfing the internet at the internet cafe that her brother owns, and had been curious to test it out. Her husband of two years had immediately liked the idea, and they had applied. These two seemed so unlike anyone I would have thought would want to participate in such an activity. They are the lower end of middle class, not as ‘westernized’, which though non-pc sometimes s
eemed a fairly accurate way of gauging class in India. I wonder if they know what they are in for or what a swingers’ club is intended to do. As Vishal explains stuff to them, they listen with blank expressions. Dilip assures Vishal that both he and Priya are interested.

  After they leave, Vishal sighs deeply. Initially he had seemed suspicious of Dilip, thinking that he may have forced Isha into this, but Isha seemed to be as enthusiastic, if not more than Dilip and Vishal has made it clear that enthusiasm is what matters the most.

  Now that the interviews are over, I ask Vishal who has made the cut.

  ‘Couple Number 1 is ideal. As for the oldies, it seems unlikely, but I won’t rule them out. Older couples are more likely to give contributions, and I need that. Right now all the expenses are coming out of my pocket. I eventually hope to make some money with this club, charging for membership once people realize what a unique concept this is,’ says Vishal.

  ♦

  For the party in the evening, Vishal has brought along a bag containing many types of erotic paraphernalia, most of which has been sent to him courtesy the Texan, Cherry. These include a rabbit shaped vibrator, dill-pickle-shaped-dildos, neon-coloured cock rings, cheap lacy garter belts and packs of fruit-flavoured condoms. He is also carrying a box full of novels with salacious titles, backdated copies of pornographic magazines displaying photos of nude men and women, erect male genitals and baby-pink vaginas with fashionable, cropped hair-cuts. Vishal scatters these items around the small apartment rented for the night from a real estate broker friend. The rather unprepossessing apartment is in an obscure colony in Noida, a suburb of Delhi. Vishal never holds these parties at home. There are stains mottling the omelette coloured walls. The only source of ventilation is two small windows. I help Vishal set up the various props that he has brought to decorate the apartment—an old wooden chair with a hole in the seat that he calls a ‘lick chair’, a 5”x5” cardboard board with circles cut in various spots that he calls the grope wall, and a bundle of cushions in what he calls the ‘play area’. Vishal has brought along a few bottles of alcohol, to ‘relax the mood of the party’. To mark my contribution, I have brought along some namkeen—salted peanuts, and potato chips—not knowing what else to contribute. I am nervous about the proceedings of the evening, but equally I am curious to see how the motley crew that Vishal has assembled will get on with each other.