Exploring The Indefinite

I love Indian women. They are beautiful, charming, sexy and (usually) infinitely cleverer than the men I meet. They are also less pompous and self important. In fact, they deliberately stay under the radar just to play the men around them.

This is why I love working with and sharing my life with women. I don’t have to suffer locker room jokes or hear tall tales about fantastic sexual exploits. I can relax with women, have fun and (O yeah) crack jokes about men. I don’t see the six yard sari as a sign of sexual bondage. I see it as a great liberating force. For me, it’s far sexier than jeans, mini skirts and the horrible designer gowns that have suddenly become fashionable. The sari for me, is the ultimate turn on. Remember the rain soaked Madhubala walking into the garage in Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi? Or Kareena Kapoor dancing in the rain in Chameli? These are iconic images of sexuality. Both Madhubala and Kareena were sari clad, fully covered. Neither were doing the jhatka matkas you see even pre-pubescent little girls do on reality shows today. Yet they symbolised a rich and vibrant sexuality. As indeed did Meena Kumari in Saheb Biwi Ghulam and Waheeda Rehman in The Guide.

Now you know why I love Savita Bhabhi. She’s Indian. She’s sexy and she wears a sari.

By banning her site, the I&B Ministry has demonstrated (yet again) how men want to control women all the time. What is Savita Bhabhi’s greatest appeal? That she is a typical Bharatiya nari who is brave enough to demonstrate that when it comes to sex she’s no pushover. I have known many women like her who pretend to succumb to the sexual politics that men incessantly play around them and yet manage to get their way by cleverly manipulating the XXL male ego. So even as they play coy and subjugated, they are actually free women who live their lives on their own terms. I admire such women and worship on their altar.

No wonder Savita Bhabhi for me is iconic. She’s the woman who can take all her sexual decisions on her own without fretting over them. Over 60 million fans flock to her site every month, no mean achievement for a sari clad desi nari, her long dark tresses parted dutifully in the middle where the bright red sindoor flames, while a mangalsutra dangles between her ample breasts. The idiots who argue that her’s is a porn site should go visit what real porn sites look like. To begin with, every porn site uses photographs. Filthy, vulgar, exploitative photographs of actual women, not comic book characters having some harmless fun spoofing the way we Indian men treat our women.

Savita Bhabhi is a symbol of freedom, of empowerment, of the sexuality our women can wield if they are allowed to escape the sham world we Indian men trap them in because of our own fears of sexual inadequacy masquerading as machismo. That’s why so many rapes happen. We feel inadequate when it comes to having sex with an equal partner. So we want sex slaves as wives, maids, friends, work colleagues, even underage kids. Savita Bhabhi challenges this mindset. The more virgin and demure she looks, the more powerful she is as a symbol of defiance against male chauvinism.

Animation underlines that symbolism. It affirms unequivocally that she’s not out to titillate; she’s out to prove a point. The amazing artists who brought her alive (Deshmukh, Dexstar and Mad) have created a person who will survive in our history books as the first Indian comic book character who took on the pigs and made them wince. So much so that the Government of India had to invoke the IT act of 2000, amended in 2008, which allows it the power to ban any website that “threatens the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence and security of the State” or hampers “friendly relations with other states”.

No, till date, I have not seen Savita Bhabhi seduce Sarkozy or Berlusconi though I am sure she would have done a pretty decent job of it. Nor have I seen her sleep with the Al Qaida. Even if she did, I would believe she did it in our national interest, rather than to sell any military secrets. Sari clad Indian women don’t usually do that even when they have sex on their minds.

C’mon Ms Minister, stand up for women’s rights and sexual freedom. Get your goons off Savita Bhabhi; set her free. Remember what Woody Allen said. Assassination is just an extreme form of censorship and I’m sure you don’t want to kill off India’s first symbol of the sexually liberated woman. There are a hundred surreptitious ways of still meeting Savita Bhabhi on the net(use of proxies like http://www.kproxy.com to find http://www.savitabhabhi.com) but why should we? The Taliban hasn’t taken over India yet.