GUARDIANS OF PORN AND MORALITY

Doesn’t it sound a little incongruous to give the charge of Porn and Morality to the same people? It is like electing a rapist to guard women’s virginity. Hence, less than a week before St Valentine’s Day, these Guardians of Porn And Morality (GPAM, like SPAM), were salivating over some “foreign” porn act whilst simultaneously ensuring that their determination to protect the Indian people against such “vulgar” and “indecent display” of love on the day of a “foreign” saint is as steadfast as their oath to do everything for the good of the people.

Courtesy: Reuter

You can have a motley of opinions. My opinion is that it is probably good for us that they were watching porn. I can illustrate this by the case of a bartender who was offering free drinks to everyone in the bar. When asked as to what was the game, he replied with determination similar to that of GPAM, “I am doing to the bar what the bar owner is doing to my wife upstairs.” I don’t know what the debate in the assembly and what was the bill to be passed; but, such horny MLAs (Members of the Lecherous Assembly) could have actually sc***ed the people if they hadn’t been watching sc***y acts on their phone. If you follow my reasoning, we should demand that watching porn should be made compulsory for Members of Lecherous Assembly and Members of Pornography (MPs). This would keep them from passing laws that sc*** the daylights out of us.

Indeed, now one knows as to why they have been asking for laptops for every member of parliament and assembly. Firstly, the words (and not single word) lap top must be doing wonders to the libido of these not-so-gentle-men. Then, the lap top certainly would provide bigger images with greater clarity of the intricate scenes. You can also understand the flaming hurry to usher in 2G and 3G so that live action can be streamed to them.

Most people, I am sure, have found nothing out of place about three Lechers watching porn in the assembly. With declining standards of our public morality, such things are only to be expected. When a septuagenarian Governor can be found naked with young girls in his official residence, why not young hornies in the assembly? I think what is being rued is not that. What is being rued is the double-standards maintained by the GPAM.

Courtesy: articles.thetimesofindia.indiatimes.com

A few years back I acted in and directed a play called ’30 Days in September’ for a purely Navy audience. When I read Mahesh Dattani’s play, I was taken in by the intensity of the storyline and scenes created by him (he is a really accomplished playwright with a movie ‘Morning Raga’ starring, amongst others, Shabana Azmi and Perizad Zorabian, to his credit.  The play was about incest: my initial reaction was that services audiences more comfortable with humour, comedy, mystery and suspense may not like a play about incest (I played the bad guy Vinay). However, we received a standing ovation. The remarkable thing about the play was the ease with which the playwright brought out the double standards displayed by the bad man both as a maternal uncle and finally – in a shocking denouement – as a brother.

The author as Vinay in ’30 Days in September’

Whilst researching the subject, I found that the incidence of incest in India is very high. The then Minister of Women’s Affairs and Child Welfare, Renuka Chaudhary, gave out the government-researched figures and brought out that about 49 percent children in our country are victims of incest and child abuse. The most appalling fact given in the report was that even young boys are not safe.

We have a recent nauseating judgment in the case of a 10 month old having been raped by her neighbour Ramkishan Harijan and the reason that the Bombay High Court gave him lesser punishment was because of taking cognisance of the Counsel for Defense’s plea that ‘the rapist was poor, father of two, living alone, away from his native place and therefore probably lost control over himself’. Disgusting, to say the least.

Courtesy: examiner.com

Then we had a Minister in Goa Assembly who inferred that “women deserved to be raped because of wearing provocative clothes”. India and especially the national capital is now amongst the unsafest countries for women.

So, to conclude the deception of double standards, do we let the GPAM make laws on morality and do nothing about their own? Do you think that the children wouldn’t have read the news and seen the pics (you can’t ban the children from reading newspapers, can you?). Do we conclude that the foreign culture of celebrating such “depraved” days as St Valentine’s Day is responsible for the wide-spread degradation in our public morality? Haven’t we become a nation that is always in search of some foreign thing or the other for our general rot of values; something similar to Indira Gandhi’s “foreign hand“?

Like in the case of Mary Magdalene, I don’t know who will and should chuck the first stone? Certainly not GPAM.

Lets have some honest soul-searching and opinions.