Electric Feather: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories Edited by Ruchir Joshi, Tranquebar, Rs 395

Righteous indignation is perhaps not conducive to the creation of great literary pieces. Among other effects, it produces confusion, which is evident throughout Ruchir Joshi’s introduction, “Repairing Brindavan”, where he puts forward the rationale of the book. Joshi says that this collection addresses the “dearth of good erotic writing in the Indian Subcontinent”. He briefed potential contributors that the “writing had to be around and about the erotic, the sexual, and it could be as graphic or not as the writer liked”. But it should hold the “serious reader” by being more than “sex writing for the sake of sex writing”, which some well-established writers, reportedly outraged at Joshi’s proposal, pointed out it would be.

The “Wall of Rejections” Joshi faced spurred him on. And he came up with this collection, which, on the one hand, is a challenge to the “Taliban goons in Afghanistan” and the Hindu Taliban who assaulted young women in a Mangalore pub, and on the other, is meant to give some good kicks to the “sexually avid subcontinental youth”. One assumes that it is also an answer to those authors who turned down Joshi’s offer, dubbing it an invitation to bad sex-writing. It is a pity that anger against sundry Talibans, prudish writers, combined with the pledge to entertain serious and non-serious audiences alike, has produced a collection which, in most parts, is an example of what Joshi was trying to avoid — bad sex-writing.

One wonders what Joshi’s criteria really were in putting together this collection. The references to Anaïs Nin and Almodovar in the introduction would suggest that Joshi was aiming at something more intelligent than plain pornography. But most of the stories, the editor’s included, are pornographic, and that too of the most juvenile kind. Far from firing the imagination, all they do is elicit a series of yawns. And even if you fall asleep in the middle of the book, don’t expect wet dreams.

The opening story, “The Wedding Night or, Bachelor’s Boudoir 9”, by Samit Basu has as much wit as its title. It begins smartly enough, with the Bengali narrator, out to attend a “Big Fat Bong Wedding”, calling such an occasion an event in which “two nice, loaded and future-society-pillar types [get] their Official Penetration Permit”. But just when you begin to be amused, if not aroused, by the antics of the characters, Basu delivers the master stroke, involving an elaborate set-up aimed at making two friends acknowledge their unacknowledged passions for each other. The description of group sex, which is supposed to be the high point of the story, is so puerile that it is an insult to the adult reader. While reading about the characters moaning, slurping and grunting away in glory, one can begin to understand why Joshi talked about the book giving pleasure to the “sexually avid subcontinental youth”. Samit Basu’s story is the stuff of pubescent fantasies, patched together from blue films and Mills & Boons trash. It puts into question the author’s abilities, artistic and otherwise, as the narrative voice slides bafflingly from that of a sardonic man of the world to that of an untutored adolescent about to have his first lesson in sex.

Thankfully for the reader, not all stories are as silly as Basu’s. “Heavenly Ornaments” by Sheba Karim is one of the best. This story about a little girl’s introduction to eros and thanatos, to pleasure and fear, to tenderness and humiliation, through her life in her grandmother’s family in Karachi recalls Ismat Chughtai’s fiction. Like most of Chughtai’s young heroines, Bina is a waif. The temporary absence of parental protection in Bina’s life leaves her defenceless against the real, but once it has impinged on her childhood world, she has to surrender herself to the “dark waves” of the Arabian Sea, from where there is no turning back.

If Chughtai is an invisible presence in “Heavenly Ornaments”, she gives the story by Parvati Sharma, “The Quilt”, its title (Chughtai’s eponymous lihaf is a quilt). Sharma apologizes to Chughtai in the footnote, and apologetic she should be. For her take on Chughtai’s story is more of an affront than a tribute, being nothing but a graphic description of lesbian sex.

“The Delicate Predicament of Eunice de Silva” by Tishani Joshi is clearly written with the feminist objection to pornography — that it is premised upon the woman’s passivity — in mind. As the 30-something, fat and unattractive Eunice at last learns the art of giving herself pleasure, albeit with a bit of help from the memory of her (married) boyfriend’s lovemaking, she reminds one of Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Re-forming the Crystal” — “Desire: yes: the sudden knowledge, like coming out of ’flu, that the body is sexual. Walking in the streets with that knowledge. That evening in the plane from Pittsburgh, fantasizing going to meet you.... But knowing all along that you were not the source of that energy and joy; you were a man, a stranger, a name, a voice on the telephone, a friend; this desire was mine, this energy my energy.”

The gravest problem with almost all the stories is that they are elaborations of certain stereotypes of sex and sexuality, and hence, for all their attempts at titillation, are rather stale. The stories of gay love are dark and guilt-laden, those of sapphic love are too celebratory to be true, while those about heterosexual love are too littered with panties and thongs to be credible. All the stories thus become an exercise in pointlessness.

In the introduction, Joshi talks of reviving through this book the Brindavan of mythology where Krishna could frolic with his gopis sans inhibition because love was not a taboo. He pits “that ancient subcontinental psychic forest of erotic freedom” against the “delusionary chapel of our parents’ world-view”, which being “sex-free zones”, young adults had to hide under beds to read pirated porn. If Electric Feather is aimed at celebrating the love of the body freely and openly, than why does the cover show the book hidden underneath a pillow? Are we then still in the “delusionary chapel”, only this time of the editor’s world-view?