09 August,2009 11:30 AM IST | | Soumya Mukerji
...isn't just one of the many titles by erotica author Louisa Burton. It is also the story of how most of us blossomed from awkward adolescents into sexually aware adults through covers high on carnal capers, the kind that our parents stocked
The best of everything lies between the lines. Love and lust, the most. No wonder then, that in the good old years when we wore braces for ornaments and zit-zapper cream for makeup, the most 'forbidden' feelings arose from fantasies of playing an ardent author's tempting protagonist. Of putting oneself in Lolita's shoes, of walking Perry Mason's path. And that's how we graduated to sexy stilettos and big town bars, flaunting the most sensuous side of ourselves.
Remember the days when you dug up dad's bachelor trunk to derive unseconded pleasure from dog-eared Debonairs, or hid their marriage manual away for a midnight read? Biggies from writers' block do.u00a0 "My father had a portable closet, and I couldn't do without the Playboys," recalls graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee. "But more so, it was the unattainable divas who roused desire. Shakuntala in Amar Chitra Katha, in the same clothes that Zeenat Aman wore in Satyam Shivam Sundaram, and Phantom and Mandrake's girlfriends," he cites.
Broadly, erotic literature can be divided into two: Classic and crass. The former of the Kama Sutra kind, and the latter, plain old printed porn. Most of the pre-21st century generation, however, grew up on the in-between stuff, the kind that juggled art, ardour, and nudity. It was fiction with just the right amounts of friction, and frivolity. 'Erotic Romance,' Wikipedia termed a section of it later, explaining how great sex was key to love in those stories, much in opposition to the conventional theory. But heck, who cares. It wasn't about making love, but money. And for the hundreds of thousands of twelve to seventeen-year-olds who feasted on such fantasies to stir the budding adult in them, it was all but a source of pleasure.
It's funny then, that the story of O (Also a sex-laden 1954 release by Pauline Reage), is denied by those who once experienced it. "Interestingly, even though we passed the phase and know our children will go through the very same, the idea of discussing it is so uncomfortable. And this goes for both them and us, no matter how open-minded and forward-thinking. I remember how we first became aware of our bodies and spent those extra hours in the bathroom, but when it comes to your child, you just don't see it the same way," says Raksha Bharadia, author of the Indian edition of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.
Today, however, things are different. Covers tucked away for clandestine affairs have been replaced with quick e-porn; intense, intelligent word-imagery with wild, in-your-face thrusts, and mystery men and women by characters who can't get any more naked. The plot isn't the point: 'no wonder-worlds of pain, pleasure and profundity, please, give us easy, effortless ecstasy.' Voyeurism was never this vulgar, not for the shy adolescent who found the subtlest of sex reads so adventurous.
Veteran authors must agree, but then, aren't they always full of surprises? "Even in those days, everyone wasn't innocent. They were the more precocious among us who knew it all," says Chowringhee writer Sankar.
"And I don't think the kind of exposure that kids today are getting is negative. They are fortunate," he continues, unfortunately for the neo-contemporary pulp fiction writers, whose thrillers fail to thrill where they really should.
Chicklits mostly beat about the bush, when good old Ken Follett describes the soft, red one that his hero in A Place Called Freedom sees on his lady's groin while helping her during childbirth. The Ludlums and Sheldons and Gardeners of Sin City still stand tall, and DH Lawrence commands. Ian Fleming with his flirtatious Bond hasn't been forgotten either, and Paulo Coelho, more modern-ly speaking, has matched up in his sadomasochistic portrayal of spiritual enlightenment in Eleven Minutes. Every sweet 16-year-old has wished she was Maria, and every young man who came across the paperback, her secret lover.
The magic of moving from a smile to a kiss to under the corset didn't just leave young lads smitten, but also the big screen, with its adaptions of the most popular scandals in print. One was that of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which, in its original print, used then banned four-letter words such as f''k (four times) and c''t (10 times).
Then, there were the much-mused Emmanuelle and John Cleland's Fanny Hill, but that wasn't what you found in bookshelves back home. Premdas was too pure, but thankfully, Gulshan Nanda proved juicy. Dickens ran
dry of 'passion ink' many a time, but Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca filled that femme fatale vacuum. The excitement, after all, isn't just about the act itself, or even foreplay, but of the anticipation and imagination that steamy writing builds. As Sarnath puts it, "It's the filling up of the unsaid that makes for the richest fantasies, and fiery futures."
So, even as Savita Bhabhis and visually explicit Web videos take over the term 'sextravanganza' for today's youth, ultimately, it's all written.
