Tale of 3 Ps....Caught in the act!!!!!

I was doing my next post on Jodhpur and was in a bit of quandary regarding how to encapsulate all that has happened over the last nine months into something crisp and readable. Suddenly my laptop heated up and I shut it down for a while. Then as I was surfing through channels, I stumbled upon the “hot” topic of Politicians enjoying Pornography in Parliament being debated with grand rhetoric by our politicians. I heard a bit of what they had to say and felt it was an utter waste of time to give so much of airtime to such a petty issue. Suddenly, I felt the urge to put my post on Jodhpur on the backburner and take up this subject. Of course, I too don’t mind wasting time on a Sunday night especially when I am in a place like Jodhpur where there is not much to do.

So let me start by giving a brief backdrop to the debate and why it has assumed such importance all of a sudden. In Karnataka, three MLAs were caught enjoying porn while they were getting bored during the assembly session. Then the scene moved to Gujarat where the same thing happened. Since then the issue of Pornography has become much politicised and scrutinised under the moralistic microscope. Is Pornography bad????

The moment you try to answer this question you step into that realm of tolerance v/s intolerance. Some say watching porn is distasteful while others say watching porn privately is fine. I being the more tolerant kind, my vote lie with the latter group. But the issue is not simple and you cannot judge a person based on AYEs & NAYs with respect to this issue. Watching porn is not a crime and in fact, not bad either. As long as you do not disturb others or do not break the code of conduct applicable in your immediate environment, no one can question you.  At this juncture, one only needs to know where he or she can watch and where he or she can’t. However, if we extrapolate and establish that pornography encourages slave trade, invasion of privacy, paedophilia and atrocities against women, then we are faced with a different question. And that critical question is: Should we watch porn or should we reject it outright???? Porn industry is doing well in the west and there it is viewed as an art form with aesthetically shot videos. A porn star like Sunny Leone can expect to be a part of the mainstream society and lead a respectable life. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the mature way in which Indian media reacted and now she is doing Jism 2 under the banner of Mr.Mahesh Bhatt. Soon you might also see her in some Saas Bahu daily soap in a Tulsi like avatar.  Indian porn is sleazier and unfortunately the major share is of MMS Scandals which are in bad taste and need to be blocked. We might say a certain kind of porn is an art form but hardly any of us are art connoisseurs. In reality, we do not watch it to rate the quality of work or to appreciate the finer details embodied in the piece of art. We all do it for pleasure when we get bored. Porn is a part of growing up process and almost every adolescent goes through that phase when such content seems appealing. With time, such desires die down and lots of Hard Disk space gets freed up. Even at a later stage, people might watch it occasionally. But it is not unusual to come across some lechers who make it a daily routine. Nudism is celebrated in Hollywood but is taboo in Bollywood as yet, though we have come far  away from those days of two flowers coming together to symbolise love making.  Sex scenes in mainstream Hollywood flicks are instances of very mild porn. There are levels of porn too like XX and XXX, etc. I wonder why the 24^th alphabet and not A or B. Experts can leave their comments below…lol!!!

Our architectural marvels carry images which are very suggestive and I am sure parents have hard time explaining the engraved images to their kids. “Papa yeh kya hain???.....”Chalo bittoo ki ma..hum woh ice cream stall ke paas chalte hain. Yahaa aaj kuch zyada hi garmi hain, wahaa zyadaa achcha hain!!!”  Moreover, we live in the land of Kamasutra which is believed to be THE GUIDE TO SEXUAL PLEASURE. But, I read it somewhere that it is way much more than just a mere treatise on sexual gratification. It has a greater social connotation. Yet people dig themselves six feet under the ground when there is any mention of it. The problem is that SEX is such a taboo in our society that people do it discreetly and hence oppressed sexual desires often take a negative form. Anything artistic is not bad and the same should stand true for sexual content as well. In essence, pornography is actually not art rather the absence of it. Loveless Erotica for commercial reasons is pornography or genuine love making captured on camera for commercial reasons are examples of pornography. It is often cheap and gross. Art for one is sleaze for another. There is a very thin line between art and sleaze and we fail to honour that. We should celebrate art and reject sleaze but in our lack of willingness to understand, we get confused. This results in good art being rejected on ethical grounds while paving the way for sleaze to sell discreetly. Here, I come back to tolerance v/s intolerance. Awareness and counselling are the only way to fight sleaze and once we ensure this, all the evils would also be taken care of. The more you try to stop by force; greater will be the repercussions on the society at large.

I have always said this that IT revolution owes a great deal to pornography as well. It did attract lot of young stars of our age to visit those newly opened cyber cafes and explore the world of internet. We all started with ASLs on Yahoo Messenger and now we hardly use it. In fact, I do not even remember my User ID. We have gone through this stage of watching porn and now we hardly visit such sites. You can never stop people from enjoying porn. The idea is to not let that create evils.

When I talk about evils, you obviously think about atrocities against women. I heard one of the participants constantly repeating the words “Objectifying woman”. It is unfortunate that when it comes to sex, Men are vilified. The panel member either was ignorant or conveniently ignored the fact that many women also enjoy porn. The fairer sex also has desires and they do draw pleasure from such videos as well. I learnt this truth when I had borrowed a pen drive from one of my class mates back at college for some project presentation. I was surprised as hell when an interesting name came up during the virus scan. Men are also being objectified but yeah not to the extent that the women are being objectified.

So, watching pornography is not an issue. Watching pornography in the Assembly is somewhat an issue but the real issue that no politician is talking about is: Were these politicians voted in to watch porn when the session is on??? The country is being raped in the Parliament and in the assembly; the MLAs are enjoying the video.  The loss to the country is the same whether the politicians watch porn or they read comic strips. Parliament/Assembly sessions are for deliberating on drafts and bringing out policies for the greater good of the society. It is absolutely acceptable if the politicians carry such sexual content on their cell phones to the assembly and as long as they do not use official hardware and also valuable work hours for such activities, but those desperate souls surely did not figure out what they ought to have figured out during their teens. No one would have raised an eyebrow if those MLAs would have copied the video and watched it later, may be while on their way back to home.  These guys not only wasted our taxes but also lot of water in the toilet. The sanitization should happen quickly and every politician should be made accountable for every second that he/she breathes during office hours. This holds true for any profession and all professionals in fact.

To end, my salute to the journalist who captured that secret footage which got the entire country talking. I wonder how you would view his act. Shoot karte karte dekha toh usne bhi hain…………!!!! He ignored the assembly session and chose to create a story on this. From now on, the politicians would even throw away the newspaper if they find an objectionable image immediately on turning the page. THE MEDIA BOMB CAN EXPLODE ANY WHERE & OUT OF ANY DAMN THING!!!