We had just moved to SE Asia then and lived not too far from a giant trade exhibition hall.
One lonely weekend, I took my reluctant husband to the little country's first sex exhibition. I saw large hordes of wrinkled single men and a few young couples there. There were no housewives or children who typically swarmed to the expo for the usual warehouse sales.
On a raised stage, a very enthusiastic DJ was trying to rouse the crowd, who stood unmoved. He wanted couples up there, and wouldn't say why. I looked at the impassive faces around and knew this country wasn't for me, so there was nothing to lose in making a spectacle of myself if I had to. So I went up the stage, pulling along my bored husband. Two young local couples joined us, encouraged by our presence.
The DJ produced oddly shaped velvet stools and couches from the wings. Our challenge was to use the props and demonstrate as many sexual positions in a minute as we could.
From up there, I had a better view of the sad old faces in the audience and nearly jumped off the stage at the thought of performing anything before them. My formerly bored husband suddenly found the humour in it and wouldn't let me go. He grabbed the mic and even made a little speech before he arranged the props and a very embarrassed wife into various positions on the props, counting off each one into the mic.
We won. Condoms, a video on the Kamasutra, lubricating gels ... And a vibrator ring.
I kept it by my bedside until we moved home. I gave my friends the other prizes, and it became their favourite party game with clothes on. That vibrator never measured up to my sportive husband's mastery on the stage that day, but it was the one prize I never gave away.
Saturday, July 06, 2013
Woman on Top
Your skin tasted of salt, your hair of cinnamon
Your lips of pepper
The Saturday morning after she bought her first cable subscription, Maya grilled sausages and tomato sandwiches at 6 am.
She microwaved oats with whole milk, and fried two eggs sunny-side up for an early breakfast with her son before his athletics heats. She wrapped for him the sausages with sandwiches and a chocolate milkshake, and kissed him goodbye.
She had begun drinking mineral water when she woke up and sipped more while she worked out. She did crunches and planks and watched the new "sexercise" videos she had saved on her tablet, trying to learn them.
Maya had never bought cable before that year. There had always been a basic terrestrial service so her family would have access to a few news channels, if there ever was a curfew and they needed the news, perhaps.
But now, eight months after they had returned to their country, her friend wanted to transfer his cable subscription midway through his contract. He was going to buy a comprehensive package with regional worship channels for his parents.
Maya agreed to the transfer and now the four of them were faced with a bewildering number of choices. It was a whole other screen life they had missed - of food, travel and all-day dancing, singing, playing - and now she knew, worshiping.
That morning, she performed her Kegels to Channel V, and when it switched to a Salman Khan starrer with a simpering heroine, she switched to Star World.
Woman on Top, old loved movie, was on.
And at last she was in love with cable.
Love and food combusted when coupled with Penelope D'Cruz in Woman on Top. Maya remembered it from 13 years ago, during a phase when she cooked and fed large numbers of people with affection and hard work and excitement. It starred Mark Feuerstein, whose first longing look at Penelope was like Naren's first glance at the conference.
And like Naren, he was tenderly sweet, but very like a puppy whom you only wanted to pet, not bare yourself to.
Naren, for whom she did not update her changing phone numbers. Of the "Do you like hairy chests?" question that threw her off. Who only wanted "to hold" her, and dropped on his knee at her feet, the first time another man had touched her outside her marriage. Who did not deserve a betrayal which was all she would have for him if she had let him hold her.
After her floor exercises, she lightly massaged ayurvedic oil on her arms, face and neck and the grooves where her thighs met her groin, and the tops of her feet. With the oil in and Woman on Top on screen, she jogged, did jumping jacks and high kicks and anything else she felt like.
Meanwhile a friend texted from abroad. Maya would miss her that summer; she had already left India after a visit. But then there was the next phone call, from the newest woman in her life, Parul, her alter ego born twelve years after her.
Together they had spent treasured hours in a foreign country, discovering desires in common, sharing and loving each other, not ever having enough time because of work and family.
Now Parul talked of meeting at a boyfriend's farmhouse by a lagoon, where they could swim naked and explore each other and their lives apart.
Dangerously, but not disliking the thought, Maya asked Parul to take out her husband, Vinod, who was then visiting Parul's city on work.
Maya remembered Parul's whimsical observation that she would really not mind if her own husband had an affair with, for instance, Maya. And Maya smiled to herself, thinking that if she threw Parul and Vinod together and they made love, there was no one more worthy than Parul of Vinod whom she loved obsessively.
For now, Maya wanted Parul to ask Vinod if he could send Maya for a holiday alone to the farmhouse by the lagoon.
Later, showered and blissful, Maya peeled and sliced ripe mangoes that her aunt had sent from her orchard. And Woman on Top kept pace, while she ate mangoes in the nude, abs worked out and limbs epilated.
Your lips of pepper
The Saturday morning after she bought her first cable subscription, Maya grilled sausages and tomato sandwiches at 6 am.
She microwaved oats with whole milk, and fried two eggs sunny-side up for an early breakfast with her son before his athletics heats. She wrapped for him the sausages with sandwiches and a chocolate milkshake, and kissed him goodbye.
She had begun drinking mineral water when she woke up and sipped more while she worked out. She did crunches and planks and watched the new "sexercise" videos she had saved on her tablet, trying to learn them.
Maya had never bought cable before that year. There had always been a basic terrestrial service so her family would have access to a few news channels, if there ever was a curfew and they needed the news, perhaps.
But now, eight months after they had returned to their country, her friend wanted to transfer his cable subscription midway through his contract. He was going to buy a comprehensive package with regional worship channels for his parents.
Maya agreed to the transfer and now the four of them were faced with a bewildering number of choices. It was a whole other screen life they had missed - of food, travel and all-day dancing, singing, playing - and now she knew, worshiping.
That morning, she performed her Kegels to Channel V, and when it switched to a Salman Khan starrer with a simpering heroine, she switched to Star World.
Woman on Top, old loved movie, was on.
And at last she was in love with cable.
Love and food combusted when coupled with Penelope D'Cruz in Woman on Top. Maya remembered it from 13 years ago, during a phase when she cooked and fed large numbers of people with affection and hard work and excitement. It starred Mark Feuerstein, whose first longing look at Penelope was like Naren's first glance at the conference.
And like Naren, he was tenderly sweet, but very like a puppy whom you only wanted to pet, not bare yourself to.
Naren, for whom she did not update her changing phone numbers. Of the "Do you like hairy chests?" question that threw her off. Who only wanted "to hold" her, and dropped on his knee at her feet, the first time another man had touched her outside her marriage. Who did not deserve a betrayal which was all she would have for him if she had let him hold her.
After her floor exercises, she lightly massaged ayurvedic oil on her arms, face and neck and the grooves where her thighs met her groin, and the tops of her feet. With the oil in and Woman on Top on screen, she jogged, did jumping jacks and high kicks and anything else she felt like.
Meanwhile a friend texted from abroad. Maya would miss her that summer; she had already left India after a visit. But then there was the next phone call, from the newest woman in her life, Parul, her alter ego born twelve years after her.
Together they had spent treasured hours in a foreign country, discovering desires in common, sharing and loving each other, not ever having enough time because of work and family.
Now Parul talked of meeting at a boyfriend's farmhouse by a lagoon, where they could swim naked and explore each other and their lives apart.
Dangerously, but not disliking the thought, Maya asked Parul to take out her husband, Vinod, who was then visiting Parul's city on work.
Maya remembered Parul's whimsical observation that she would really not mind if her own husband had an affair with, for instance, Maya. And Maya smiled to herself, thinking that if she threw Parul and Vinod together and they made love, there was no one more worthy than Parul of Vinod whom she loved obsessively.
For now, Maya wanted Parul to ask Vinod if he could send Maya for a holiday alone to the farmhouse by the lagoon.
Later, showered and blissful, Maya peeled and sliced ripe mangoes that her aunt had sent from her orchard. And Woman on Top kept pace, while she ate mangoes in the nude, abs worked out and limbs epilated.
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