Contents Introduction vii Sexboy 1 Taslima Nasrin Te Baker of Milna 15 Kristen Cosby Harsingar 37 Amitava Kumar Naked Cleaning Lady 49 Jaishree Misra Te Degradation of Erasmo S. 65 Cyrus Mistry Te Middle-East Position 89 Krishna Shastri Devulapalli Insomnia 105 Mitali Saran
Te Last House 115 Rupa Bajwa Ty Will Be Done 127 Shinie Antony Te H Holy oly Sex ape Project Project 137 Meena Kandasamy Graveyard Shift 151 Graveyard Kankana Basu First Kiss 163 Vikram Kapur Te House Help 179 Tabish Khair Chunni Lal 189 Aditya Sharma Te Real Sex 217 Amrita Chatterjee About the Contributors 225
Introduction It gives me great pleasure to introduce this collection of erotic stories. I never thought that one day my name would appear on the cover of a book that’s primarily about people having sex. Neither did my mother. She still doesn’t know. You Y ou mig might ht be wond wonderi ering ng wha whatt qual qualifie ifiess me to edi editt an anthology such as this. Am I a writer of erotica? No. Am I a professional editor of fiction anthologies? No. Perhaps I am an extremely erotic person? Er… well, my wife may not agree. o be sure, like most men of my age, I have had my share of erotic experiences. But I wouldn’t say they are in the Lady Chatterley league. Or in any league that counts. In fact, my most distinctive erotic memory is a fairly innocuous one. I was quite young then, late teens. Sexual experience zero. I was in a garment shop, looking to buy a shirt. Helping me pick one was a young ibetan saleswoman. Slim-waisted, high cheekbones, white shirt, blue jeans. I finally settled on a dark grey semi-formal. semi -formal. I was in i n a -shirt. -shirt. Tey did not have a trial room. I was wondering if I should risk buying without trying it on when she said, ‘Come here.’
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Before I knew it she was behind me, guiding my arms, manhandling me gently, until I found myself inside the shirt. I wasn’t expecting this. But she surprised me again. She came close, so close that I could feel her breath, and ran her hands down my chest, smoothening the folds of the fabric. I suddenly felt hot. She began to fasten the buttons, one by one, starting under my chin. Her hair, lustrous, black, and fragrant, fluttered inches from my lips. I was taller than she was. Te top two buttons of her shirt were open. I looked down, and then away in panic. Her soft hands hovered over my shirt front, now n ow alighting on my chest, only to take flight and come to rest a few centimetres lower, to thrust a rounded hardness into a tiny hole. She had no idea what she was doing – doing to me, that is. Or maybe she did. As her fingers glided down my body, my nerves thrummed in a sweet tingle I had not known before. It was all new to me, and too pleasant to understand. Once she was done with the buttons, she stepped back to look at me. Ten she came up close again, to straighten the collar.. I felt her fingers graze my neck, then brush collar b rush away a thread or a speck of dust from my shoulder. At that moment, had she asked, I would have bought every single shirt in the shop. In the end, I bought three. I couldn’t get her off my mind. I went back the next day day,, and several times in the subsequent weeks and months. But I never saw her again. I don’t remember her face anymore, nor even the name of the shop. But I remember the flowery lightness of her fingers on my body, my chest, my belly. echnically, her touch would not even qualify as touch – for it was through two layers of fabric. And yet, it is to this stranger that I owe my initiation into the erotic.
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o be honest, it wasn’t until I began writing this Introduction that I even framed that experience as ‘erotic’. It doesn’t make sense in any other way – I wasn’t in love with her. Nor was I sexually attracted. And for the record, she was ‘dressing’ me and not undressing me. It was simply two random bodies coming in momentary contact to produce a spark of pleasure. A pleasure that is pure gift. An unasked for, unexplained, unexpected giving. Why did this salesgirl act as she did? Was she having some fun? Was Was it a desperate tactic to make a sale? Or was she oblivious to the effects she was causing in me? It is all a mystery to me – as it should be. It is my contention that the erotic is the only realm of the mysterious that remains unconquered. Everything else has been analysed, explained, and converted into data. But the erotic is still pure subjectivity. A belt can turn someone mad with lust while for another, it’s just a piece of leather to keep the pants up. Erotic subjectivity typically typi cally expresses itself through play. play. Role play and fantasy are what imbue the ordinary with mystery, inducing the defamiliarisation that is integral to the erotic as well as to literature. li terature. If literature originated ori ginated in day-dreaming and fantasy, it stands to reason that the earliest literature would be of the erotic kind. And so it is. For instance, the first novels in English – by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding – had a good deal of prurient content. oday these men are considered, individually and collectively, the ‘father’ of the English novel. Teir novels are ‘classics’ taught in respectable university departments. So I have always been puzzled by people who consider consid er erotica to be lowbrow, something ‘serious’ writers wouldn’t have time for. Te pseudo-snobs who say, let the EL Jameses of the world
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do erotic fiction – I want to slap them with this anthology. For this very reason, there are no ‘erotic specialists’ in this collection. All are writers with a serious amount of literary work behind them. A couple had written erotic fiction before; most hadn’t – until I contacted them. And I wanted it that way. Many of the writers I approached had a problem writing a made-to-order erotic story stor y. It’s It’s one thing for a story stor y to organically develop into an erotic narrative, and quite another to set out to write an avowedly erotic story story.. While the skill and imagination involved might be the same, the latter is infinitely more difficult. It’s like meeting a comedian at a party and asking him to be funny – it doesn’t quite work like that. But the alternative to commissioning erotic stories is to take what’ss already been written, either stories or novel excerpts. But what’ this book wasn’t wasn’t about collecting collecti ng existing literature – it was about putting together fresh writing. writ ing. And that’s that’s what you will find here. ypically, anthology editors are driven by a pre-ordained set of concerns, such as diversity of themes and voices, gender parity in representation of writers, and so on. But I have attempted nothing of the sort. I think Te Pleasure Principle is is fairly diverse without my having had to make an effort to make it so. On the gender front, if anything, we have surpassed the benchmark by some margin – the book has six male writers and nine female. Tat we reached this ratio without a self-conscious balancing act is revealing. It suggests that the erotic is primarily, though not exclusively, the realm of the female. I’m not the only one to think so. In her classic essay, ‘Te Uses of the Erotic,’ Audre Lorde writes, ‘Te erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognised feeling.’
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Lorde, of course, is interested in the political expression of the erotic. My focus, as the editor of this anthology, has been the literary expression of the erotic. But whichever way one looks at it, there is no getting away from the fundamentally destabilising power of eroticism. As Lorde says of our erotic selves, ‘We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within Western society.’ Here the ‘we’ refers to women. But one could say the same for men, and her judgment applies to semisemi-W Westernised societies like India as well. So if the erotic has been suppressed in our lives, what has taken its place? Te pornographic. From the internet to Bollywood to the kind of graphics that accompany news stories, st ories, the pornographic is one of the defining elements of popular culture today. It would be no exaggeration to say that for millions of people, pornography mediates their sexuality, and their relationship to their own bodies and the bodies of their lovers. For Lorde, ‘pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling’. Tis distinction between the erotic and the pornographic has been a guiding principle in the curation of the stories for this book. My brief to the writers was simple: etch out the emotional landscape of sex in a fictional narrative. Tey liked it for the obvious reason that it offered a broad canvas for the imagination. It partly explains the rich diversity of approach, style, voice, theme, setting, and characters in these stories. For instance, I did not plan to have a lesbian-themed story, nor did I plan for a homo-erotic one, or a transgender narrative – all of which my friends told me I must specifically commission in order to make the book suitably inclusive. While
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inclusiveness defined in political terms is important, it is not as if the erotic realm of heterosexuality has been exhausted. Quite a few of the stories in Te Pleasure Principle cover cover new ground even in ‘straight’ territory. territory. Te unexpected transmutations of online lust when it goes offline, the sex tapes of our ancient gods, the yearnings of an elderly widower, the forbidden desires of a middle-aged school teacher – are some of the erotic subthemes explored in the following narratives. One question that pops up in the context of an erotic fiction anthology is that of political correctness. My answer to this question: No. In this, I take my inspiration from one of my favourite essayists, Siri Hustvedt. In ‘A Plea for Eros’, Hustvedt states an obvious truth that a political correctness gone rogue makes us deny: ‘Of course women are sexual objects; so are men.’ And if this is so, it’ it’ss because ‘desire is always between a subject and an object’. Tis doesn’t mean a free pass for sexual abuse or harassment. But in a context of intimacy between two people, ‘erotic pleasure… thrives on the paradox that only by keeping alive the strangeness of that other person can eroticism last’. Keeping alive this strangeness requires not only objectification, but also imagination, and here we come full circle back to literature – via fantasy – as the treasure house, refuge, and training ground for the imagination. So, as I have already said, and don’t mind saying it again: leave your shoes of political correctness at the door before you enter the portals of literature, especially erotic literature. Some of the authors in this volume would be familiar to you, some others not so familiar. Tat’s by design. I don’t see the point of an anthology that does not make an effort to discover and introduce fresh voices to a wider readership. So
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I’ve aimed for a reasonable mix of established and upcoming talents. Being by nature allergic to rules or expectations of any kind, I have broken even the easiest and most obvious expectation to fulfil – of picking only Indian (or Indian-origin) writers for an Indian anthology being brought out by an Indian publisher for an Indian readership. I have included a white American writer from San Francisco for no reason or logic whatsoever other than the fact that I loved her story. Before I conclude my ramblings, I feel obliged to answer one final query: the why question. Why an anthology of erotic stories? Why now? Aren’t there enough of them already? I believe what India needs right now, more than anything else – more than foreign investment, investment , more than good governance, and more than nine percent economic growth or a half-decent football team – is a new volume of erotic stories. And more and more of them. India needs an erotic revolution. Indians need to give up both V channel spirituality and Redtube pornography – which sort of nicely complement each other – and get back in tune with the physicality of their bodies, with the geography of their feelings. Lorde’s definition of the erotic is most relevant in this context. ‘Te erotic,’ she writes, ‘is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.’ Pornography reigns supreme today because nobody – neither the powers that circumscribe our life choices, nor we as individuals – are ready to engage with the chaos of our feelings. Tose of you who work in offices would be familiar with the managerial injunction to ‘keep feelings out of it’, or to ‘decide rationally and not emotionally’. Te erotic is all about putting
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emotions and feelings back where they belong – in our lives. And what better place to begin than the domain where feelings are being vacuumed out by pornography: the bedroom? So yes, I might as well come out and say it: for me, this anthology of erotic fiction is not only a literary but also a political project. It is my claim that bringing out a collection of erotic stories today, especially in today’s India – I don’t need to explain what I mean here – is an act of moral responsibility. I, therefore, wish to thank all the writers who took the trouble to ration the time and energy for contributing a story. A big thank you also to the publisher Amaryllis for being eversupportive and patient, and giving me a free hand as an editor – a rarity in these times. Putting this volume together has been a great journey of discovery for me, one that began last March, and is ending nearly a year later. Yours as a reader will begin now, as you turn the page. Or maybe you are one of those who reads the Introduction last – after having read the stories, which is not a bad idea I must say. Either way, I hope you will love the stories, not just with your mind, but your body too. Welcome to Te Pleasure Principle . G. Sampath April, 2016 New Delhi
Sexboy taslima nasrin
Translated from Bangla by Arunava Sinha
C
HAIA LI LI IS WAIING
for Sexboy. As evening lands in Calcutta, so will Sexboy. Sexboy. Holding hands with wi th the darkness, d arkness, Sexboy’s taxi from Dum Dum Airport will enter this south Calcutta lane. He’s coming from Bombay. He’s going to stay with Chaitali. he two of them have done almost everything over over the past six months, just not met face to face. hey had spoken for the first time on Facebook, primarily about sex. Chaitali had been attracted by the name Sexboy. he profile picture was of a naked man’s. What else could the conversation be about except sex! It was to talk about sex that Chaitali had added him. Her own barren existence, devoid of sex, was becoming unbearable. So many young men in the city, and yet a beautiful, accomplished woman like Chaitali couldn couldn’’t find herself a lover lover.. But then how would she, for she did none of the things required to get one. Chaitali couldn’t stand the city these days. She was invited to parties, but she didn’t go. Seeing the same faces, listening to the same stories a hundred times, saying hello with an artificial smile dangling from her lips – Chaitali had had enough of all this. Social networks threw up fresh faces, new conversations. Chaitali’s father had chosen the man she used to be married to. Several years had passed since she had divorced Subrata. It wasn’’t as though nothing had developed between her and other wasn
