Khushwant Singh on Women, Sex, Love and Lust

by Khushwant Singh

  Most men remain convinced that women enjoy being raped. Many years ago, the Mayor of Missouri pronounced ‘the difference between rape and seduction is salesmanship’.

  The birth of a daughter has always been regarded as a calamity. ‘People ask me how many children I have,’ said the champion boxer Mohammed Ali, ‘and I say I have one son and seven mistakes.’

  Adolf Hitler, as one might have suspected, believed that the women’s movement was a Jewish conspiracy. He said: ‘The message of woman’s emancipation is a message discovered solely by the Jewish intellect and its content is stamped with the same spirit.’ He was not the only one to believe that women had no brains. ‘Brains are never a handicap to a girl if she hides them under a see-through blouse,’ wrote an American wit. ‘Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch; everything stops’ said Kurt Vonnegut.

  The great wit of the British parliament, Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, wrote of his female preferences:

  I like them fluffy – I know it’s bad taste –

  With fluffy soft looks and a Bower at the waist,

  With golden hair flying, like mist round the moon

  And lips that seem sighing, ‘You must kiss me soon’,

  No huffy & or stuffy & not tiny or tall

  Butt fluffy, just fluffy, with no brains at all.

  According to Leo Berg, women express the best through their breasts: ‘A woman’s breast is the organ with which she is able to express herself most intelligently. It is her language and poetry, her history and her music, her purity and her desire … The bosom is the central organ of all female ideas, wishes, and moods.’ A 17th century English proverb sums it all up: Men have many faults, women only two: ‘Everything they say, and everything they do.’

  3

  Is the Indian Woman Different?

  The incidence of cheating on husbands is no different in India than in other countries. Given the opportunity and the assurance of secrecy, Indian women are as amenable to illicit liaisons as any other.

  Many years back I got an invitation to write a 5000-word article on ‘The Indian Woman’. As my readers are aware I enjoy a certain measure of undeserved notoriety of being an expert on the subject, I had to live up to my image. ‘I should be able to write it with my left hand – baaen haath ka khel (Incidentally, I am right handed), I thought and accepted the invitation with alacrity. I got out my writing pad and my ball-point pen. I wrote in capital letters the heading ‘The Indian Woman’ by Khushwant Singh. And that is where the 5000-word article ended: in six words.

  Is there such a thing as an Indian woman distinct from other women of the world? Does a woman look like a Pakistani, Kashmiri or Punjabi? (some Kashmiris even look like Europeans). Our Garhwalis, Nepalese and Bhutias look like their kinsmen across the borders; some even look like Tibetans or Chinese. Our Bengalis look like Bangladeshis, our South Indians like Sri Lankans. No, there is no such thing as a distinct Indian look. What distinguishes an Indian woman from another is her sari, bindi and sindoor – all three habitually worn by Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans and available to others. Does an Indian woman smell different from others? I haven’t sufficient experience to expound on it but I do know that since most women massage themselves with oils it is likely they smell of coconut, sesame, almond – or whatever. Have they distinctly different temperaments? Are they quicker to anger or more placid than other women? Proportions of quick tempered to the placid are about the same in all nationalities.

  Are Indian women more sexy, less sexy, more forthcoming or more inhibited than others? Indian males have cherished some illusions about their women-folk being more chaste and more loyal to their husbands than women of other nationalities. They were conceived as Sitas, steadfastly spurning other suitors and taking their own lives on the mere suspicion that their husband’s suspected their fidelity. It is the image of the Pativrata Sita that has been imposed on Hindu women – curiosity is extended to Muslim, Christian and Sikh women as well. Unfortunately it doesn’t fit any of them. The truth is stated bluntly in one of the Panchtantra Tales which says: ‘Wise men have said that nothing is gained by searching for the source of a river, the origin of the family of a hero or sage, or looking into the fidelity of a wayward woman. A woman is born good or bad, and nothing can make the wicked virtuous. Fire may perhaps turn cold to the touch, and moonbeams warm, but a wayward wench can never turn chaste.’ One of the Jataka Tales (pre-Christian) records: ‘Wise men have said of yore, the ocean can never be satisfied with rivers, a fool with sins, a babbler with loose talk, a learned man with scriptures, fire with fuel and a woman with men.’

  The theme most popular with them was of ascetics performing austerities in mountain caverns and acquiring enormous siddhu (occult) powers by virtue of their celibacy. Their rivals sent apsaras to seduce them. Without exception women succeed in their missions.

  The Kama Sutra by Vatsayana is generally accepted as the definitive work on sex and Indian women. I have always regarded it as comic rubbish. Any modern sexologist will tell you that there is no basis of dividing women (or men) accordingly to the size of their genitals, that there is no difference in sexual appetites of women according to religion, caste or region – a healthy male or female has more desire for sex than the undernourished or sickly.

  The more I read on the subject the more I am confirmed in my opinion that all said and done the one thing that distinguishes an Indian woman from another is her passport.

  4

  Shrimati India

  In work an ayah, in the kitchen a cook, in business a bania, in bed a courtesan. If you have them all in one person, you do not have to be polygamous – you have a one-woman harem.

  We were in the restaurant Pasha, discussing the possibility of drawing up a gourmet menu consisting of the tastiest dishes from different parts of India which the patroness, Nargis Oomerbhoy, had made her speciality; she personally supervised every detail in the kitchen of her restaurant.

  From food the conversation drifted to women: how to manufacture Shrimati India by combining the best of the features of the beauties of our land. ‘For complexion, nothing to touch a Kashmiri,’ exclaimed a Kashmiri. ‘She is fair but not as white as the European: she’s more like old ivory than raw ham. Also has beautiful eyes: almond shaped and as large as a gazelle’s. They can be as blue as the sky in autumn; they can be as dark as the limpid pools of Heshbon.’

  ‘You north Indians have more colour prejudice than South African boers. All you want of your women is that they be fair – the whiter the better. Give me the smooth ebony black of an Adivasi: Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Muria or Bhil – all have lovely skins. And what figures; bosoms that never sag, rounded buttocks that never become the shapeless mass of flesh your city women carry around.’ After some debate on old ivory versus ebony, we conceded that the Adivasi ladies have a figurative edge over their Dravidian and Aryan sisters.

  Someone entered a plea for the lasses of Himachal and Rajasthan: ‘They are neither too fair nor too dark. They are neither as large as the Kashmiri, the Punjabi or the Jats of Uttar Pradesh or Haryana; nor as small as the Maharashtrians, the Gujaratis or the ladies from the South. Modest-sized bosoms, slender waists and bashful eyes.’ His remarks stung the Haryanvi: ‘The women of Haryana have all that in larger and healthier proportions. They are the only ones who know how to bear themselves like queens. See them stride along: ram-rod straight, flouncing their long skirts: Wahl! Wah!’

  ‘What is a woman without beautiful hair? And no women have hair like the Bengalis: raven-black and always long enough for them to sit on,’ said the Bengali. ‘They also have the most melodious voices. A woman may look like a swan but, if she has a harsh voice, she is no better than a crow. Our Bengal can produce a thousand Lata Mangeshkars.’

  ‘Too much Jabakusam,’ retorted a gentleman with disdain. ‘All Indian women put too much oil, butter or ghee in their hair. Somebody should tell them it doesn’t do any good. What is the use of hair if you cannot run
your fingers through them?’

  ‘We are going off the subject,’ remarked a Tamilian. ‘The classic Indian beauty is the southern belle. Long hair, perfectly shaped eyes and with much more animation in them. Also, full bosoms, slender waists, large hips and the smoothest skins in the world. That is why they are the only ones that can do the Bharatanatyam. When a Dravidian beauty walks, you can hear the tinkle of ankle-bells.’

  ‘What about the Maharashtrians? They are the cleanest looking of any: always appearing as if they’ve just had a bath. For me cleanliness is next to godliness.’ ‘Looks do not matter as much as manner of speech and sophistication’ pronounced a roué. ‘And for that, it has to be a UP Muslim or a Bombay bawaji. You noticed both the influences in Indira Gandhi. She spoke like a cultured Lucknavi begum, she had the manners of a Europeanized Parsi and bearing like Sultana Razia.’

  So the composite Indian woman was evolved: Kashmiri complexion, Bengali hair and voice, Adivasi bosoms, Haryanvi gait, Maharashtrian cleanliness, South Indian figure, Punjabi animation, Hyderabadi coyness, Lucknavi speech and bearing and Parsi sophistication. Then we proceeded to invest Shrimati India with traditional qualities: In work an ayah, in the kitchen a cook, in business a bania, in bed a courtesan. If you have them all in one person, you do not have to be polygamous – you have a one-woman harem.

  5

  Woman’s Breasts

  ‘The interesting thing about breasts is that they change all the time’.… When a woman is running, or angry, or wearing a sweater, a breast is the most restless thing in the world.

  What is it about a woman that most men fall for? Is it her face or figure? Her bosoms, broad hips or her posterior? An anatomical dissection would be futile because it is the totality of her physical makeup (‘all her body is pasture to mine eyes’) plus other intangibles like her temperament, sauciness, and above all her vitality that determine her attractive potential for the male. However, it has also to be conceded that when it comes to what is vulgarly known as sex appeal, it is the bosom, the middle or the buttocks that rouse the male libido. Of these three items the pornographer and the voyeur will vote for the pudenda or the rear; the aesthete be he poet, painter or a man of letters, will vote for the bosom. No part of the female anatomy has been more exploited by artists and photographers nor more written about by novelists.

  Alan Brien has long been my favourite journalist-author. Even since the Times group of papers including the Sunday T’imes ceased publication, the two items I have missed most are the cross-word puzzle and Alan Brien. Thus, I was glad to learn that he was profitably engaged in field work on the female breast or what in scientific terminology is known as mammarology. Apparently, his wife Jill Tweedie approved of the project: ‘I have never attacked soft porn,’ retorted Jill to the insinuation that the two were separating after her husband’s ‘boobing’ for the sake of money.

  ‘The interesting thing about breasts is that they change all the time’ wrote Alan Brien. When a woman is running, or angry, or wearing a sweater, a breast is the most restless thing in the world. But when it comes to penning variations to the theme Alan did not show much ingenuity. He described them as others before him have done, borrowing vocabulary from architecture (domes, igloos, arches) or from the gourmet (apples, peaches, etc.)

  The Song of Solomon compared the breasts to ‘two young roes that are twins’. We Indians are familiar with comparisons of bosoms with melons and mangoes. We also have allusions to their restlessness: a popular Punjabi folk song sings of them as jangli kabootar — wild pigeons. They have been endowed with an autonomous existence of their own; an otherwise shy, docile damsel may be possessed as an 18th century English poet wrote of ‘a rugged bosom that beauty cannot tame.’

  Male preference for a well stacked bosomy female is prehistoric. Figurines of goddesses with three breasts predate the Indus valley civilization. Even, later when women shed the third breast, the sizes of the two that remained were of vital interest to the male. A woman poorly endowed with was always regarded a liability. In the Old Testament, brothers lamented ‘we have a little sister and she hath no breasts.’ Charles Dickens’ approach was that of an exhausted old man: for him the ideal breasts were those on which a man could repose, i.e., like a pillow. For the more youthful the preference would be for the more shapely ‘on which a man could hang jewels.’

  I can understand bosoms being likened to domes or fowl or fruit which they resemble but find it less comprehensible when they are described as edibles. A child may have good reason to call them ‘honey pots’ but it sounds odd when old Spencer addresses his lady love’s adornments as if he were saying grace before supper:

  Was it a dream, or did I see plain?

  A goodly table of pure ivory,

  All spread with junkets, fit to entertain

  The greatest prince with pompous royalty:

  ‘Mongst which, there in a silver dish did lie

  Two golden apples of unvalued prize

  In another of the Amoretti the praise is largely floral:

  Her goodly Bosom, like a strawberry bed;

  Her neck, like a bunch of columbines

  Her breast, like lilies, ere their leaves be shed;

  Her nipples like young blossomed jasmines.

  On erotica my personal preference is for the bawdier form of literature like the limerick. To wit:

  To his bride the keen-eyed detective,

  Can it be that my eye-sight’s defective?

  Has the east tit the least bit

  The best of the west tit

  Or is it faulty perspective?

  6

  Female Porn

  Women’s chromosomes are different from men’s and that makes them less prone to dreaming about sex and more choosy about the men they fall for.

  It is as rare to find a man who does not enjoy pornography and dirty jokes as it is to find a woman who does. Blue films, girlie magazines, voyeurism, writing graffiti on lavatory walls and recounting risqué after-dinner anecdotes are almost an entirely masculine phenomenon. When Beatrice Faust posed the question: ‘If women are going to have equality with men, why not have pornography for women?’ she admits that she was confronted with ‘many kinds of silence’ from her female audience. Women are simply not turned on by pornography; ‘their engines are similar (to those of men) but the starter-motors are very different.’ Why?

  Beatrice Faust analysed this curious difference in the male and female approach to porn in an engaging thesis, Women: Sex and Pornography. The plain and simple answer is biological: women’s chromosomes are different from men’s and that makes them less prone to dreaming about sex and more choosy about the men they fall for. Men do not need much stimuli to be turned on, they can engage in sex with almost any woman regardless of mental or emotional appeal, whereas women, though capable of having sex with any man will only be roused by men they find attractive. Men respond to images, notions, dilly stories, women to sweet murmurings and the gentle touch. Hence the jingle:

  Higamous hogamous,

  Woman’s monogamous,

  Hogamous higamous,

  Man is polygamous.

  According to Faust women wish to be loved in the manner they make love to their babies. Men, on the other hand, ‘enjoy sex so much and need intimacy so little that they cannot understand why a woman should quibble about such trivia as where, when and with whom she makes love.’ Hence, the conclusion summed up the saying: ‘Marriage is the price men pay for sex, sex is the price women pay for marriage’. Despite women’s lib, it remains a man’s world with a man-made four-point programme of four A’s prescribed for women: they must accept their men, adapt to them, admire them to boost their egos and appreciate them as bread-winners. We are back to square one.

  7

  Woman’s Eyes

  ‘The light, that lies

  In woman’s eyes

  Has been my heart’s undoing.’

  We were in the lounge of a hotel in Goa waiting for the weather to clea
r up. Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents without a sign of clouds lifting anywhere. There was nothing to do except sit and gossip. Inevitably the conversation turned to women. As they say Saavan-Bhadon is the badmaash mausam - the amorous season. During this mausam, if you can’t do (we were men in our seventies), you talk about doing. ‘What, in your opinion, is the single most important item in a woman’s beauty?’ they asked me as if I was an expert on the subject, Without hesitation I replied: ‘As far as I am concerned, it is her eyes.’ I tossed in a remark I had read somewhere made by an Englishman about a woman telling her lover: ‘I would like to drown you in my eyes.’ What exactly did she mean?

  A woman’s eyes, when blue, are often compared to the ocean. When black, to the waters of an inland lake. In the Song of Songs they are likened to ‘the pools in Heshbon’ (oddly enough, also to ‘doves beside brooks of water’). Dante Gabriel Rossetti in The Blessed Damozel had similar notions:

  The blessed damozel leaned out

  From the gold bar of heaven;

  Her eyes were deeper than the depth

  Of waters stilled at even.

  To the best of my knowledge, Indian poets never used oceans or lakes as similies for women’s eyes. Sanskritists used flowers or animals to describe their beauty: Kamal Naini (lotus-eyed) or Mrig Naini (doeeyed). Persian and Urdu poets also lauded them as chashm-e-aahoo (gazelle-eyed) or nargisee (like the narcissus). Both Hindi and Urdu poets praise the pink-eyed (I have never seen one) as if drunk: mast or sharaabi.