For sometime now I have been appalled by how Victorian morality is often passed off as Indian culture by middle aged men and women and their unhappy and uneducated offsprings (they are all around us by the way and I mean no disrespect to any of them)- the colonial legacy is so infectious that it almost makes me squirm with disgust every time someone speaks of who should have sex and with whom ( and when, shaadi nai hui mere) in a country of 1.2 billion people, Kama-sutra, Khajuraho and other deciduous erotic temples. The courts are still debating about whether to reform the adultery law (why not scrap it ), and some scared patriarch is already losing sleep over a change in the status quo of the sexes. All in all, it was a Happy Independence Day, with old friends and acquaintances and a solid afternoon nap (full of insecure and comic nightmares). Here's one for the record:
It's the year 1893, and the Viceroy Lansdowne hires a spokesperson for the erstwhile colonial government in lieu of the Malthusian scare of a burgeoning native population. He is a very talented young man who resembles a Modi (Nirav is a deshdrohi, so I am safe in this reference) predecessor, a man who can cook up dreams just like you and I and this one being educated comes up with a line that is broadcasted all over the subcontinent, even the princely fiefdoms.
"If you have a mens rea- you will have gonorrhoea"
India was never the same again.
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