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Porn ban: Indian govt's marketing mantra to make it look sexier
Have you ever read the last few pages of those Hindi magazines meant for women? The Grehshobha-Sarita types? They carry terrifyingly complicated knitting patterns, and some fine cooking recipes, besides more-than-readable articles. But I am talking about the last pages, my friends. Never mind. We’ll come to that later. First, let’s talk about the optimum use of our imagination.
Have you ever read the last few pages of those Hindi magazines meant for women? The Grehshobha-Sarita types? They carry terrifyingly complicated knitting patterns, and some fine cooking recipes, besides more-than-readable articles. But I am talking about the last pages, my friends. Never mind. We’ll come to that later. First, let’s talk about the optimum use of our imagination.
Answer this: Can you make all kinds of porn sexier than it is? It’s already porn, you see. And I am talking about everything that comes under the porn umbrella, from the hard-to-like anime to the very popular ‘story-wala’ type to the awe-inducing orgies, and several other kinds that my friends keep talking about and I have only a cursory knowledge of, believe me.
Well, trust the Government of the Once-Married Forever-Bachelor New Marketing Messiah to make anything look much sexier and more useful than it actually is.
How? Just ban the thing. Even if just for a few days, and ineffective anyway, just impose the ban.
It’s a tried and tested formula that even the previous, otherwise ban-friendly government of the silent kind did not use on porn, which is a pity if one assumes that the Indian State has all along wanted to help the ever-growing sex-video industry grow even bigger. But, with the current ultra-nationalist regime, whose leader believes Indians were ashamed of being Indians before he took over, there are no half measures. India must occupy its rightful place at the helm of all nations, on all counts.
Therefore, it’s a shame that India lags at fourth place in online porn consumption. With our bulging population and humungous levels of curiosity, we should no way be ranked behind minnows like the United States, Britain and Canada. Some surveys even rank India as low as fifth. That’s not fair. India, after all, has the second largest number of internet users after China. The government had to step in at some point and salvage the nation’s pride.
Finally, around 10 days ago, the department of telecommunications issued an order to internet service providers to ban 857 websites listed in a petition to the Supreme Court by Kamlesh Vaswani, a lawyer from Indore. The ban — withdrawn earlier this week after a barrage of criticism by those who don’t care about the health of their arms and fingers — did the trick. Google Trends, which records internet search patterns, showed that interest in porn shot up extensively after the ban. Keywords such as ‘Sunny Leone’ showed a surge of 2,050%, reported news website The Quint. So far, so good.
Ironically, that’s not what Vaswani was aiming for. He does not agree that we need to be number one in self-help-sex. He believes that “if there is no pornography in India, good things will happen”. The good lawyer even took pains to list out the 857 websites, after he saw that the government was slow in its actions and not listing out the millions of websites that show Ess-Ee-Ex. He wants the ban to return, and remain.
Vaswani is not alone, you know. There is no dearth of those who want all sex — except the child-production intercourse variety, of course — to disappear from our lives. These people have already helped make many Indian and Hollywood movies more popular than they deserved to be. They’ve also petitioned, threatened and vandalised TV channels and production houses, leading to a situation where even words like ‘queer’ are beeped out and removed from subtitles.
This is where those magazines come in. If you are willing to let go of your fixation with the usual porn, just flip to the last pages of any women’s magazine. Prefer the Hindi ones, as they are more detail-oriented and animated in their language. There is usually a section called ‘Sex Samasyayein’ or something to that effect. Locate it. Read the questions slowly and the answers carefully, and let your imagination do the rest. Porn is not even needed, if only you know where to look for that forbidden piece of harmless titillation, my dear immoral sons and daughters of India.
