Sex is a complicated business. In India, it is worse because for many people, it is furtive sex
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Sex is a complicated business. In India, it is worse because for many people, it is furtive sex. Not sex while you look dreamily into your lover's eyes, languorously run your fingers through her hair before embarking on an exciting mutual exploration and more mischief. It's terrified and humiliating sex, while constantly looking over your shoulder to check if a cousin, lying right next to you, is awake, and watching you greedily. Or, alert, if an in-law, barely one foot away, wakes up in the night to get some water, or to pee. That's how it must be for much of rural and urban India, where entire families live and die in a single room. And have furtive sex in the midst of a room teeming with others.
India has no sense of privacy anyway. I was reminded of this as I watched Kaccha Limbu recently. This Marathi film by Prasad Oak, while dealing primarily with the sexual needs of a mentally challenged boy and his parents, also highlights the wretchedness of furtive sex in India. The family of three lives in a one-room kholi in a Mumbai chawl: the parents sleep on the bed, while their teenage son sleeps on the floor. They tie up a flimsy chadar as a makeshift curtain above the bed when they want to have sex. That could, possibly, technically filter out prying eyes — that is, if the other party is so civilised as to pretend to be asleep — for a lifetime of nights. But, how would you filter out the soundtrack of sex — squeals, protests, sighs and moans?
So, those who can afford to have sex in the privacy of their own bedroom must be incredibly lucky. For many others, it is sex sandwiched between your father-in-law and your brother's brats, with perhaps a mouse scurrying in the dark corners of the room. Some couples put up a suitcase between themselves and other assorted sandwiched bodies, marking out amorous territory: I suppose there must be shrewd calculations as to where exactly the suitcase must be strategically positioned.
When you're anxious to get it over with as quickly as possible, it can only be the quickest of quickies, and foreplay an unthinkable luxury. In that case, what is the modus operandi if the woman is wearing a sari? There is no question of gently undressing her, layer upon layer falling away to reveal a lusciousness in the dark. My impression is most men brusquely lift a woman's sari and her petticoat as if they were engineering inspectors, and simply get on with it. In fact, Bikas Mishra's Chauranga shows us an extreme example of death by sex, as a woman dies in the throes of orgasm, as an upper caste landlord, sexually exploiting a low caste woman, stifles her moans as she climaxes to avoid being caught out, unwittingly suffocating her to death.
I'm also reminded of a friend, a middle-aged single woman in Amsterdam, who got a new boyfriend, and had to appease her cat, who used to curl up in her bed. The cat was appalled by this ménage à trois, and eventually slunk away, sensing that he didn't stand a chance.
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com.
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