A cock and bull story

A popular (and at times insufferable) standup comic’s favourite line goes thus: “Whenever I feel intimidated by the firangs when I am travelling abroad, I turn around and tell them, ‘Dude I am from the land of Kamasutra. I can f*** you in more ways than you can imagine’.”

A terrible joke that may remind you of a certain balatkaar gag in a popular film. But it rarely fails.

Then there are the jokes about a poor bloke called Hardik who went to America. Add to the list, the completely unintentionally funny one about peacock’s tears that has been breaking the internet.

It begs the question: Whatever happened to the ingenuity of the people from the land of Kamasutra? Forget a thousand ways to do it. We cannot even do the one thing right — talk about sex in a fun way, crack a sexual joke without offending, sounding crass, uninformed, self righteous or racist? At what point did we turn from a country that was totally cool with talking, writing, or even creating artistic pieces about sex, to a nation of creeps?

Those of a certain vintage will remember danseuse Protima Bedi sprinting down Juhu beach stark naked. It was 1974 (before I was born, in case you are wondering) and was for a photo shoot for a film magazine. In 2017, Priyanka Chopra is being slut-shamed for showing off her knees during a meeting with the PM. In 1984, Basu Chatterjee made Shaukeen, a sex comedy with the stalwarts of Indian cinema — Ashok Kumar, AK Hangal and Utpal Dutt — playing lecherous old men while Tina Munim ‘played’ them. In 2016, you had films such as Great Grand Masti and Mastizaade — that left little to imagination in their simulated sex scenes with bread rolls, ice lollies and pugs. Apparently, these films were meant for the generation that grew up on American Pie.

A look at some of the questions mailed to popular sex columns will tell you that between then and now, we seem to have forgotten how to understand or appreciate sex for what it is. That it need not always be about gender politics or procreation. Neither should it be dealt with grim seriousness, beeped out, or treated as ‘education’ (though some men need it more than anything) or pornography.

But in the era of cock and bull stories, perhaps it is only befitting that you have a legal professional waxing eloquent about tears of celibate peacocks and Tusshar Kapoor trying to mate with a horse.

The former is at least funny. The latter, not.

Scribbler, scribe, traveller Chandrima Pal takes you through the sexual landscape of today

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