Once upon a time, an editor asked me to write a porny story for an anthology of porny stories. She used the polite word "erotica", but I feel that trying to be polite and porny at the same time is like chasing your own tail, which is also the only tail you'll end up getting. I was 25 at the time, and had even less experience of sex or porny stories than I do now. I obediently went off and wrote something that was a little polite despite itself - portica, if you will, or eroticorn - and therefore sucked, and she never got back to me, so that was the end of that. All I can tell you is that it is not easy to write good porny stories, although it is very nice to read or watch them.
I don't know if "porny" is one of those words that could cause a website to get blocked by the recent porn ban. Online, where it applies, it's known as #PornBan, but its official name is the "Complete-partial-repealed-sorta Porn-just-child-porn-revenge-porn-and-er-collegehumour.com Ban-oh-don't-be-dramatic-we-have-or-maybe-haven't-taken-it-back-are-you-happy-now Controlled Sex Act 2015".
I'm all for wiping out child porn. I'm all for breaking the repulsive nexus of human trafficking, which feeds the porn industry. I'm all for cleaning up exploitation wherever it exists in the production chain of porn. When you start banning porn itself, however, you are messing not just with the wrong single, bored woman, but also - it turns out - with the wrong morally sanctimonious country. This time it wasn't just liberals yelling the house down over #PornBan; the socially conservative right wing on Twitter rose as one great quivering shaft of indignation, going wtf? I can imagine the Modi government lying awake at night, crying softly and hiccupping, "It's like I don't even recognise my own base anymore." It has been pointed out that after being viciously divided on beef eating, love jihad, and the hanging of Yakub Memon, online India has united as one pissed-off monolith, against the assault on our porny URLs.
No democracy likes a government supervising its dinner plate, or vetting its wardrobe, or demanding its travel documents. And it positively hates a government peering into its bedroom or down its pants. This is something that this administration, possibly high on its own parliamentary majority, is having trouble grasping. It is too busy implementing its dreary socio-cultural project -religious revivalism, jingoism, paternalism and a bunch of other unpleasant isms - to notice that significant numbers of people don't like the project, and really really love their porn. (Gratuitous aside: It is also very busy pretending that it didn't make all the little messes it is making on the drawing room carpet. Letting us all get hot and bothered about our porn, for better or worse, certainly takes the focus off those smelly little patches called Lalitgate and Vyapam.)
It's odd that a government so hell-bent on national pride also appears so hell-bent on looking stupid. Isn't this the tech-savvy bunch that took the country by social media storm? Haven't they heard that the Internet is not about to roll over and die because somebody made a list of 857 websites to block, based on a set of completely opaque parameters? The only impact of #PornBan is that the Internet is now pointing at the government and weeping and shaking with laughter. This is what happens when you leave things to policy wanks. Wonks! Policy wonks.
In an odd coincidence, someone else recently asked if I would write a porny story, nearly twenty years since the last one. I have some reservations - what if I'm even politer today,and can't turn anyone on? - but in the spirit of #PornBan, I think I'll give it a go.
Mitali Saran is a Delhi-based writer mitali.saran@gmail.com
She tweets as @mitalisaran
