By Dick Lickington
The newest wrinkle in the ever-expanding fabric of the global adult entertainment network is the forbidden fruit which is NAKED INDIAN CHICKS.
By this I mean southern Asian Indians, not the American kind and, for those who are passionate on this topic, the world is now exploding with what enthusiasts call "Desi porn".
Part of the thrill in seeing Indian girls bare it all is knowing that the models are violating centuries of repressive taboos -- all for some decent rupees and so that guys the world over can raise the tent poles in their pants.
Until very recently, kissing was not allowed in Indian movies. Even now, it remains extremely rare and is treated like nudity in America. Couples do not hold hands in public. Thus, when the Indian film Fire (Picture: ), a portrayal of a lesbian relationship, was released in 1996, Hindu fundamentalists rioted and burned down whatever theaters dared to exhibit it.
Be that as it may, none of this public prudishness has done much to stem either the rising tide of Desi porn on the Internet and in the streets or the importation of cheap copies of U.S. and European porno flicks.
In the summer of 2003, I decided to brave the brutal Indian heat and the monsoons and make a trip to the other side of the world in search of a little T&A, Delhi-style!
In the same daring year as the socially conscious lesbo drama Fire, the film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996) (Picture: ), was filmed (and ultimately banned) in India by female director Mira Nair.
Ms. Nair is an Indian expatriate who has been acclaimed globally for her crossover hits Mississippi Masala (Picture: ) and Salaam Bombay (Picture: ) that reflect the South Asian experience without the use of softcore porn sequences, opened America's eyes to the possibilities of Indian beauties slipping out of their saris.
We already knew how hot they could be from watching the stunning Aishwarya Rai (affectionately known as "Ash" by her Indian admirers) win the Miss World pageant, but we had generally only imagined them naked.
In Kama Sutra, the lovely Indira Varma (Picture: - - - ) and Sarita Choudhury (Picture: - - - ) not only get completely naked, they even get it on together in sapphic sex sequences far more incendiary than anything in Fire.
Made-for-cable softcore is one thing, but what if we want to see some Indian chicks doing the nasty in a setting that's more sleaze and less soft-focus, where do we turn? And what if we want to see sex movies Indians are making for themselves, not for some wide-eyed gauri-wallah whose head is filled with romantic visions of the "Mystical East"? Where can we see such a film?
Well, I found one. Some guy was selling it out of a black plastic bag on the streets of New Delhi, and it's a gem!
Love and Kill: The Rosetta Stone of Desi Porno Flicks.
This masterpiece of South Asian Sleaze is entitled Love and Kill. After 10 seconds of color test bars the movie begins with a blue-background title screen obviously added during video transfer, then goes to scratchy 16mm print.
The opening scenes set up a wedding between two young and wealthy Indians who have just met for the first time. But when the newlyweds try to consummate their love, a robber burst in on them to steal the young wife's wedding jewelry before she can get her salwar kamiz off.
Trying to foil the robbery, the young husband takes a knife in the chest and dies in a pool of blood. "I didn't expect this," laments the grief-stricken father-in-law upon finding the scene, "not even in my dreams." Interestingly enough, I was expecting such an event, but I never could have anticipated what came later.
After a brief karate fight between a sweaty policeman and the thief, followed by a montage sequence that leads us to believe that the young widow, driven mad by grief, is plotting to murder the group of college kids she has just been introduced to, the real action begins.
This apparently doomed little party of Indian college kids consists of three couples partying at someone's beach house in what looks like Kashmir, which is like Florida, if Florida were a mountain paradise torn apart by years of civil war.
As soon as the collegiates hit the beach, the young men's hands get busy groping their chubby Indian sweethearts' tits and asses under their clothes. This was amazing enough, but when the tops came off Shit Almighty, I thought, what have we here?!
It only got better. After some lovin' in the grass, the kids hit the pool and the tops come off again for some more groping, but, sadly, nothing else. I kept waiting for some bush-baring, but it never happened. Instead, the action cuts back to the widow, who is now being hassled by the cops.
When the karate-chopping detective starts giving her the third degree, we are told in flashback how she has been picking up young male hitchhikers, seducing them, killing them and dumping the bodies.
This black widow's rather awkward seduction technique involves spilling something on the guy's shirt, insisting she wash it along with his pants, etc. Unfortunately, she only ever strips down to a bikini and all the sex is implied.
What happens next I don't know. The damn disc I bought invariably freezes up toward the end of the movie and won't budge. Let the aspiring Indian porn-watcher beware: VCDs are worthless pieces of crap and Indian VCDs are particularly worthless pieces of crap.
Leasing Porn in Mumbai
Flush with confidence after the unearthing of Love and Kill in New Delhi, I decided to try my luck in Bombay, the Los Angeles of India. I went to the big markets near the train station where a gauri-wallah (Hindi equivalent of "honky") like me can get all the fried snacks, sweets, drugs, and cheap tourist crap his heart desires.
Straightaway my porn-senses started tingling and I looked down on the sidewalk to see neat rows of what looked like cheaply printed shrink-wrapped Indian men's magazines. Their quality was somewhere between swinger's periodicals and the newsletters Larry Flynt used to put out back when he owned the go-go clubs.
I eyed them over, but they seemed like the kind of bait-and-switch grab bag stuff I didn't want to spend any of my remaining rupees on, so I walked on until I came to a large book and magazine vendor on Maharshi Karve Road near Churchgate Station.
To the left of the standard Indian weeklies (including Debonair, the Indian Playboy, complete with airbrushed tits and artfully concealed bush) they also carried my favorite reading material for those long train rides- Indian true crime magazines. Like the classic "sickie" movies of the '70s, the true crime rags got away with nudity because they were showing crime scene photos.
They also contain hilarious sex advice columns in which Indian men are repeatedly warned to stop jerking off so damn much.
Suddenly, my eyes were drawn to a selection of 1970s Playboy and Penthouse, and a few recent issues of harder mags like Club and High Society.
"How much for this magazine?" I asked, holding up an issue of Penthouse with Lori Wagner and Annika de Lorenzo advertised on the cover. The publication date was blocked out, but I surmised it was probably published in conjunction with the release of Caligula (Picture: ) in 1979.
"400 rupees only. But you will like this one better", he answered, handing me a recent High Society.
"400 rupees! Holy shit, that's $8.00! My 30-hour train ride across the whole country cost 400 rupees! How much is this one, then?" I asked, holding up the High Society.
"700, sir, but you bring it back after a time and I will give half money back to you."
"Hmm..", I said, "Like a deposit, hai na?"
As he smiled and nodded it dawned on me that in the roughly 20 years this Penthouse had been in circulation, dozens of men had jacked off on or near it.
Sure enough, when I leafed through the two issues of Penthouse I had purchased that night in the filthy train bathroom, I noticed that someone had purposefully shot his load on a picture of Connie Lynn Hadden's snatch and rubbed it into the paper. I took both magazines home to the States with me and lost my deposit.
Lustful Witches in the Palika Bazaar
The Palika Bazaar in Delhi is (literally) an underground marketplace located across the street from the upscale shops, restaurants and businesses of Connaught Place. Shoppers there can haggle for hours over the prices of Western and Indian clothing, fabrics, electronics, music, and VCD's. I was there to stock up on Hindi horror flicks, but on several occasions, I was easily talked into perusing a couple of the plastic bags full of porno all the vendors keep hidden under the counters.
By the sheer number of times I was propositioned to look into somebody's stash, I have to conclude two things. First, that a lot of tourists buy Indian porn and second, that I give off a vibratory signal that the finely attuned yoga-enhanced senses of Indian street vendors pick up as "I want to see your women fucking horses."
Between the Palika Bazaar and the vendors on the streets of Colaba (a tourist-friendly neighborhood in Mumbai) I picked up a dozen or so bootleg video cassettes, including a copy of Caligula.
My one-handed perusal in the train bathroom of the pictures of Annika de Lorenzo and Lori Wagner in the Penthouse I bough in Delhi gave me hankering to see that atrocious monstrosity of a film again.
A week later, back home in Chicago with my DVD player, I unwrapped my goodies to see what I had blown my $10 on. I had a particularly traumatic experience viewing the film that was packaged as a porno flick called The Sexy Girl Linda.
Well, despite its alluring title. This movie was utterly devoid of sexy girls and populated instead by a couple of fat hairy German men in zipper masks and ball gags and two equally fat and German, though not quite as hairy, thank God, German dominatrices.
My brow began to furrow in confusion as I looked back and forth between the picture of the hot blonde spreading her legs on the VCD cover in my hand and the image of the fat guy in the leather harness getting his balls tortured with clothespins on my TV screen.
I thought back to words of the vendor in Delhi who sold me the tape -- "My friend, this very good movie. Beautiful girl." -- and I wondered if he had actually ever watched this particular "hot movie". Does he think this is hot? Or does he resent the intrusive presence of smut-seekers like me in this country and slipped me this disturbing little item to have a laugh at my expense?
Well, the joke's on him, because after five or so uncomfortable minutes, the German guy getting his balls tortured WAS hot!
When I unwrapped my copy of Caligula, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was, in actuality, an Indian bootleg of a pirated Chinese copy of the 1982 Italian film Caligula and Messalina, which is much harder to find than Bob Guccione's ego epic.
Watching the decadent splendors of Ancient Rome interpreted through late twentieth century Italian filmmakers, stolen by Chinese video pirates, and resold by Indian street vendors, my mind began to reel at the this truly momentous confluence of ancient and modern cultures. Who in this wicked world, I thought, wouldn't give his right testicle to be an effeminate dandy of an emperor ordering the deaths of his enemies in the senate with a limp-wristed wave of his hand and a girlish giggle?
When it comes to portraying the sex act, Indian society is wildly inconsistent, to say the least. From erotic poetry and sculpture in the Classical era (not to mention the famous Kama Sutra), to an injunction against kissing in the movies today, the Indian attitude towards dirty pictures has taken a pendulum swing.
But even today, India's official prudishness is complimented by her appetite for rented skin mags, "hot movies", and Desi sleaze like Love and Kill, making a final determination as to the status of porn in India complicated at best.
This much is certain, though- the intrepid traveler through the crowded bazaars of Dalhi and Mumbai can find all the porno he wants. And as long as he doesn't expect to get what he pays for, and doesn't mind being the 375th person to jack off to the same dirty magazine, he'll never be disappointed.
