Sunny Days

A lot of people have asked me why I was obsessed with Sunny Leone entering the Bigg Boss house as a contestant. My answer is that it is historic for a number of reasons.

This is the first time that the word ‘porn’ is being discussed in the mainstream.

For years, pornography has been totally taboo in our country. The four letter word comes second only to the three letter word in the taboo scale.

Like most Indians, I had no clue what was pornography. At our place, they changed the channel when an ‘obscene’ song came on the TV. I had to watch ‘Tip tip barsa pani’ at a friend’s place. I remember the time when a rape occurred on Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki (Yes! I used to watch the two K serials when I was in school. Go ahead, laugh). It was the first time something like that was being shown on television. I remember getting up to drink water, or turning around and scratching the wall or something.

And then I chanced upon the internet cafes. At 60 rupees per hour, it should have been beyond my imagination. But my imagination had already been triggered. At my place, there was no concept of ‘pocket money’. Money didn’t just go into the pocket, there was a certain purpose that it had. So I began lying.

And sneaking out to the internet cafes. To a secret, hidden world where nothing was frowned upon or looked at with disdain. For me, going straight from Sai Baba to Desi Baba was a culture shock of astronomic proportions.

It didn’t help that I had very informative friends at school. This one guy who sat next to me would say nonchalantly “Have you seen that picture where Aishwarya Rai is showing her stuff? That was shot by Subhash Ghai during the shooting of Taal.” With all this information, I was pumped up even more to go to the cafes.

But my limited knowledge about sex, and even more limited knowledge about computers meant that I made a mess of myself at the cafe. In Orissa, there were cafes that were porn-friendly. You just had to sit, connect your headphones, and press ‘Enter’, and the clips would begin to play.

The one I went to, however, was a decent one. Which meant that you had navigate your way through your stuff. I’d click on links that said “Want sex in Bhubaneswar now? Click here!”. This went on till there were about 40 windows opened on the desktop. Following which, I’d either switch off the computer, or quietly get up, pay, and leave.

Then came Bunty Cine World.

Bunty Cine World was a CD shop near my house. Though his signboard read: “We deals in: CD, DVD, TV Rent, Recording, Sound System etc”, one look at the shop and you knew what his main source of income was. Bunty was also a key member of the ‘A-Z Youth Association’. Like the name suggests, the association was involved in everything, from A-Z.

Now, Bunty had devised many smart ways of convincing people that he didn’t rent out porn CDs. Like, for example, asking them to write ‘DDLJ’ on the register before renting out a CD.Which meant the register would read:

1. Sushant – DDLJ

2. Kalia –      DDLJ (2X)

3. Hari –       DDLJ (20/- due) 3X

…..so on and so forth

And you just couldn’t bring a porn CD with you home, you had to bring a normal VCD with it. And since Bunty’s collection was entirely wetflix.com, you ended up bringing a Shatrughan Sinha or Vinod Mehra blockbuster with you.

And on top of that, Bunty always wrote the name of the film on the CD. So there would be ‘SEXY CLIPS’ or ‘TARZAN X’ written in big, red, bold letters, which meant you couldn’t hide it either.

After all this trouble, you waited for everyone to sleep, and then sneaked into the TV room, muted the volume, and then watched the CD. After which, you hid it under your pillow, and then returned it in the morning.

Just for watching porn.

Now, of course, things have changed. One can surf porn on one’s mobile phone. But the acceptability was still not there. Till this Sunny Leone came on Bigg Boss.

I did get a hint of things when Pamela Anderson was chosen for 44B BB4. I am glad Sunny Leone is a part of the show.

I am hoping people will accept that porn films are made, and viewed. That pornstars are normal people.

That when a mother finds a CD under the pillow and asks her son, “Beta, woh kaunsa CD hai?, the son can shrug his shoulders and say, “Sunny Leone, mom. You know her, she was on TV last year!”