Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex

Copyright Page

Copyright © 2014 Richard Crasta

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The characters and events in this book, when characterized as fiction or satire, are fictional and imaginary, and any reference to real persons, events, or countries is purely coincidental. In other essays and reflections, creative liberties have been used as are a regular feature of this author’s writings. Names may have been changed to protect the identities of real persons.

Author’s website: http://www.richardcrasta.com

All rights reserved by the author and by the publisher, Invisible Man Press, New York. This book may not be reproduced or resold in any form, including electronic, mechanical, or otherwise.

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Cover design by: Ivan Longland, www.apaganza-art.com

About This Book

Originally published by HarperCollins India in 1997, Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex had a controversial reception in the media and did not reach most of its potential Indian readers, possibly because it offended certain powerful Indians. The rights were returned to the author around three years later, and the book has been unpublished and unavailable to the public in the last twelve years.

This e-book, A REVISED EDITION with additional material, is published in the interests of freedom of speech and of making the book available at least as an e-book to anyone in the world who wishes to read it.

The following essays were published earlier in slightly different form in the following publications:

Children and the Death of Sex: The Independent, Bombay

The Bombing of Bombay etc.: The Indian-American, New York

The Plain Brown Wrapper: India Today Plus

An Interview With Khushwant Singh: The Indian-American, New York

Nuclear Weapons Fire Sale: Business Standard, Delhi/Calcutta

An Ode to a Sincere and Admired President: The Indian-American

Warning: Feeble Prose: The Business Standard

A few of the essays in this new edition have never been published before.

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

About this Book

Author’s Stylistic and Factual Disclaimer

Dedication

Epigraphs

Uncensored and My Way: A Preface to the New (2013) Edition

PART I: MORE SEX PLEASE, WE’RE INDIAN

On the Trail of Sex in Kama Land

Children and the Death of Sex

An Afternoon with Miss Universe

Indian Women Are As Lusty As Any: Khushwant Singh

The New Missionaries

PART II: MY COUNTRY, RIGHT AND WRONG

Whose Country is it Anyway? An Essay on Exile ... Citizenship

How to Make Five Billion and Change

The Bombing of Bombay and The Indian Psyche

Of Inhuman Bondage

More Sex Please, We’re Indian!

An Obituary for A Name

Delhi: A Story

Notes of a Phirangi-Desi Traveler

PART III: AMERICAN POLITICS: AN ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTION

Nuclear Weapons Fire Sale

Veni, Vidi, Vicious, or Conquest for Fun and Profit

An Ode to a Sincere and Admired President

IV: AGAINST THE NEUTERING OF INDIA

Yes, Yes, Prime Minister, Ohhh!

From the Proud Grandson-of-a-Farmer to the Humble Farmer

The Invisible Angry Men

Free Expression and Indians: The Case for Fearless Indian Publishing

Advice to Western Female Tourists

Epilogue: A Man Again: The Revolt of a Slave

Acknowledgments

Glossaries

Other Books by the Author

PRAISE FOR BEAUTY QUEENS AND OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

ENDNOTES

Author’s Stylistic and Factual Disclaimer

An Indian author writing in English—particularly if unfashionably and unabashedly male and independent, and so lacking kindly godfathers and godmothers—has a hard enough time writing and going through the whole process of bringing a book out himself without also having to deal with the perennially vexing question of which audience he is writing for—Indian, or Western. While there can be no excuse for writers who sell out, it may be that until Indians begin to spend, on books, a tiny fraction of what they spend on garish weddings or overpriced Swedish howitzers, they will have to tolerate the reality that our audience will sometimes be more Indian, at other times more Western, and most of the time merely human. My idealistic self refutes categorization, and refuses to believe that the internal realities of India are of no interest to Westerners, let alone the essays on childhood, sex, manhood, identity, and roots. Simply accept my condition, then, of being a writer between two worlds, with friends, loved ones, and an audience in both of these worlds, unable to bring himself to reject either of the two so as to curry favor with the other; and accept my occasional disjunctions in style and spelling as the purposeful expression of the ambivalence of one with a foot in two worlds (and sometimes in neither), and understand that the only way I can publish a book that is totally independent in thinking and not McStandardized or McSantized by anyone (a book I consider to be relevant to Indians all over the world, and to Westerners at times), and still survive to tell another tale, is to include the entire audience under one roof, speaking sometimes more to one than to the other, but speaking to all, nevertheless.

Absolving myself unilaterally of sins of style, audience, or orthography, I also disclaim any intention to defame any individual, mentioning individuals only in the overriding public interest, including the interest of freedom of expression for invisible people and underdog groups, which can only be achieved if they are allowed a certain artistic, journalistic, and satirical licence.

This being a book that combines satire and essay as art, rather than a journalistic assignment supported by a corporate fact-checking budget, the emphasis has been more on not tampering and violating the authenticity of essays written in a certain time or mood; for this book represents a sensibility and a mood rather than a catechism, honest questions rather than categorical answers.

Dedication

To the people of India

On our fiftieth anniversary of political independence

With a wish that our mental liberation might soon follow.

To the Constitutions of two great democracies, America and India, for their dedication to freedom of speech

And also to my father, a survivor, a gentleman, and in the eyes of his late-adoring son, an inspiration.

Epigraphs

As soon as an idea is accepted, it is time to reject it.—Holbrook Jackson.

Servitude degrades men even to making them love it.—Vauvenargues

Breaking taboos sounds like you are destroying something . To me it=s a creative act, it is creating something better.—Annie Sprinkle

No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers with my own.—Montaigne, on the right attitude for reading an essay.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.—Camilo Jose Cela, Spanish writer.

Of all writings I love only that which is written in blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.—Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

In the end, everything is a gag—Charlie Chaplin.

Uncensored and My Way—Preface to the New (2013) Edition

Except for a few internationally celebrated or consistently best-selling authors, most authors have little power in most spheres of life outside their writing. Except for one minor matter on which we do have some control, or ought to: what goes into our books. And this book is, despite its title and its overarching theme, ultimately a collection of my essays. Many of these essays could only be published in a book, because their free-spirited language and their occasional iconoclasm made it impossible for them to be published in the general media (I remember Business Standard editor Paran Balakrishnan laughing till he had tears in his eyes for almost the entire time that he was reading On the Trail of Sex in Kama-land; he followed this with an apologetic, Of course, this couldn’t be published in our newspaper, you understand. It was a scenario that had almost been exactly duplicated in a Mario Miranda cartoon I had seen twenty years back, in which the editor laughs hysterically, and then says to the cartoonist, with a serious face, Not funny!). Nor was I willing to neuter these essays to make them publishable in the general media. So they had to be published in book form if at all they were to reach my audience uncensored.

Such a problem rarely ever faces most normal writers. But as for me, when I found my voice as a writer, I was also rebelling against a personal history of repression. Therefore, I decided never to reject a word merely because it described the sexual or bodily functions, or because so-called polite (meaning hypocritical) society deemed it vulgar. Especially because some of the most vital, colorful, and descriptive words in the English language fall within this category, and not using the entire arsenal of your vocabulary makes as much sense to me as fighting a war with bows and arrows when you have automatic rifles and tanks at your disposal (though, on second thought, as an anti-war writer, that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea if followed by both sides). Nor did the prejudice against sex, the act by which we come into existence, make sense. Animals do not treat some parts of their body as dirtier or more shameful than others. So I decided to retreat, in my writing, to a primal, nonjudgmental, animal innocence. Though I first discovered this voice when I was writing my novel, I saw no reason not to be equally free-spirited and uninhibited in my nonfiction work (nonfiction and fiction being relative terms these days)–where appropriate and natural, in my judgement. I saw no reason to deprive myself of the joy of using such language, even when an essay was packed with serious ideas. If well-educated people could not have access to my ideas because my free-spirited language was a barrier, then what they needed was not ideas but . . . psychiatric help; and, perhaps, plenty of sex. (Well, who doesn’t need the latter?)

But then, that may be too unkind. I am aware that there are millions of people in India whose repressive background (combined sometimes, as it was in my case, with religious sanctions) simply makes them incapable of handling such language, and that some of these may happen to work as book reviewers. This particular book is not for them (though I would not object to someone else bringing out a toned down version of my book for their benefit). This particular book is meant for those readers, many of whom I have met in the flesh, who rejoice in my language. I would like to remind the former group, though, that Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, now considered quite tame, were at one time considered shockingly indecent and caused their authors to be ostracized. This too shall pass; this too shall become passé.

Humor commingles with sex and seriousness in my writing, which constantly shifts in tone from self-debunking (in private practice as a social detective) and tongue-in-cheek humor to tall tale exaggeration. I have decided to include a sample of my former political columns, which are anything but typical—opinionated, subjective, and even naughty at times. Yes, in Frank Sinatra’s immortal words, I did it my way.

And I will also do this book my way. Not all of the essays can be equal, for not all of our days are equal (and especially not our nights, as my soul-mate Bill Clinton will affirm). But I strongly believe in the essay as an art form. Sometimes, as in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, one long essay can justify an entire book. I do not apologize for repeating a few essays from a collection whose circulation was highly restricted, imprisoned in cellophane, and even, in some parts of the country, a secret withheld from my friends and readers. When a reader buys a book, he is not buying a bag of potatoes; he’s being invited into a writer’s soul. A passionate writer gives his life to his writings, and such commitment is either insane, or it is beyond valuation. In this book, this commitment is elaborated in a couple of essays towards the end which take the form of a personal testament. I have satisfied myself that there are three or four passionate essays here which justify the book–and another two or three, besides, in which the pleasure of laughter is its own justification–but you, the reader, will of course arrive at your own judgment.

[Most of this Preface was written in 2001-2002. This revised edition is being republished in 2013, and contains new essays that were not present in the original Beauty Queens. As a writer and a human being, I have grown or changed, depending on your viewpoint; at least I hope I have! But this book presents the words as they came out when they were originally written; I have tried to avoid hindsight or censoring of my old words just because they may seem a bit too raw or not represent my current thinking. A book is what it is, it is a voice at a moment in time: it’s therefore my duty to the reader to be reasonably faithful to the older book.]

PART I: MORE SEX PLEASE, WE’RE INDIAN

All Indians ever think of is sex. I think the entire country needs very urgent sex therapy.

—Italian female tourist quoted in Butter Chicken in Ludhiana by Pankaj Mishra.

Author’s comment: Presumably, she made this observation before Italians elected a porn actress to their Parliament. Or presumably these Italians were not struck by melongitis, but elected this actress for the hugeness of her ideas, and the impression they had made on the grateful men of Italy.

ON THE TRAIL OF SEX IN KAMA-LAND

Sex. What with the cliches about the Kama Sutra, the erotic mystique of the East, and the fact that we add an entire population equal to Canada’s to the human grand total each year, we Indians presumably spend most of our lives mucking about in the world’s largest love canal, what?

Not so elementary, my dear Freudson. Revelations of swinging politicians in former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s recent novel notwithstanding, I, for one, had about as much opportunity to propagate my gene pool as most criminals in solitary confinement—despite living in a sweltering Southern town where the weather made you want to take off all your clothes at the very same time that the mosquitoes forced you to keep them on. Indeed, I spent my first twenty years in India either in complete ignorance of sex or simply dreaming of it. And if we do have a population explosion that can be heard on the other side of the Milky Way, it is simply because all it takes, in the extremely fertile people-soil of India, is one itty-bitty sperm splattering its head against one unfortunate soggy egg every twelve months or so. Something that even the dimmest member of the human species can accomplish with no help from Madonna's Sex.

But, as I discovered during a recent visit to Bombay, the Indian masses, after a few hundred years of repression crowned by the indigenisation of Victorian prudery, have risen. Indians—well, at least middle class, urban Indians—are currently in the Decade of the Goat. Or the Ram. Or the Whamma, Bamma, Thank You, Amma.

Yes I, Detective R.C., in private practice as a social detective and analyst for over one New York-based decade, was on the trail of Sex in Modern India—not the least because as the soon-to-be author of the novel The Revised Kama Sutra, I needed to lay claim to at least a sniffing knowledge of the subject. So, outfitted with my favorite writer's tool—a Uniball Rolling Writer pen (how Tolstoy and Dostoevsky functioned before the invention of the Uniball beats me)—I closed in on a basement in Juhu, a starlet hangout and an upscale district of vice in what has long been acclaimed as the Family Jewel, I mean, the Jewel of India.

And then I entered the office of Amrita Shah, the Young and Restless then-editor of Debonair Magazine[1].

To think that the Hugh Hefner of India, the ex-officio Prime Minister of the Male Sexual Nation, the spokesperson for the