The Joys of Handy-Handy

“We have reason to believe”, wrote that great Pir Sir Charles Darwin at the end of his travels to far off lands and strange places, “that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation”.

Of the many great differences between my land and this one, the most profound and intimate is this: in Jesustan, it is perfectly acceptable for men and women, and men and men, and women and women, to squeeze, grope and fondle each others’ private parts in public. It is, however, forbidden, in the strongest possible terms, to squeeze, grope and fondle your own private parts in public. Even scratching your balls on a hot summer afternoon (that most elemental of Hindustani freedoms after the regrettable ongoing municipal and judicial assault on our right to piss where we please) is considered, well, gauche.

For a Hindustani like me, this attitude is a little mystifying. In our lands, squeezing, groping and fondling your beloved in a public place, if you survived the riot that would most likely break out, would result in a flogging by the village Panchayat or, at the very least, the payment of a equally painful bribe to the staff of the nearest police station. On the other hand, as any woman who has ever traveled on a Delhi Transport Corporation bus will attest, it is perfectly acceptable for men to play with their penises in public: no one will bat an eyelid.

That which is forbidden is, of course, the stuff of fantasy, the font of creativity. In Hindustan, we have an endless and rich seam of slang for sex and sexual organs, where the Jesustanis have but few. But Jesustanis beat us hands down on words and phrases that describe the fine art of masturbating: jacking off, wanking, jizzing, spooging, shooting your wad, beating the bishop, milking the lizard, spanking the monkey, choking the chicken (for some of these terms, I can think of no reasonable origin, short of another regrettable Jesustani habit, zoophilia, but more on that subject some other time).

I wonder why this is so. A social historian I questioned suggested that it might have to do with our varying demographic and economic conditions. In Hindustan, we have too many offspring and too little wealth, hence masturbation is encouraged. In Jesustan, on the other hand, they have too few offspring and too much wealth, and therefore frown on the spilling of seed upon the ground. A psychologist acquaintance argued that for the Hindustani, child of an overcrowded and intrusive society, masturbation was a moment of retreat and solitude; the Jesustani, the product of anomie, looked to the gang-bang instead for what he could not find in his pitilessly asocial existence.

Now, the interesting thing is that there are some in Jesustan who would like it to be more like Hindustan, in the matter of fornication, anyway. A welter of extremist organizations, including the Jesustaliban, the Lashkar-e-Jesus, and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Jesus, are committed to stamping out fornication before and outside of marriage. One group, True Love Waits, is rumored to have made at least 100,000 young people sign a pledge of abstinence. It is obviously a growing business, since full-color credit-card sized True Love Waits pledge forms retail for $5.99 for 20, more expensive than that one commodity desired more by deviant teenagers than sex, cigarettes (inside which other things can then be stuffed).

But what, I hear you ask, does masturbation have to do with chastity? Surely, if you don't want the brats to spend their time banging each other, you'd be best off letting them fiddle with their own bits instead? Aye, there’s the rub… so to speak, of course, so to speak. The authoritative Lashkar-e-Jesus website, Bible.com, notes that masturbation merely “creates a deeper desire and capacity for sex, which will lead to more masturbation. If you let yourself become enslaved to a sexual high, you will find that you need to go to increasingly extreme acts to maintain the same degree of excitement. There are even ungodly sex therapists who recommend masturbation as a way of increasing sexual desire, not lessening it. This creates a vicious circle, like the junkie who craves a fix.”

But, as a True Love Waits-recommended book asks, in a “world filled with pornography, sexual innuendo, and alternative lifestyles, how can a student hope to keep pure in body and mind”? Well, the Mormon Church-affiliated expert, Mark E. Petersen, in an essay written circa. 1970 and still widely circulated by the Jesustaliban, offered several useful solutions to the problem of masturbation, some of which I have reproduced below:

During your toileting and shower activities leave the bathroom door or shower curtain partly open, to discourage being alone in total privacy. Take cool brief showers.

It is sometimes helpful to have a physical object to use in overcoming this problem. A Bible, firmly held in hand, even in bed at night has proven helpful in extreme cases.

In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken. This can also be accomplished by wearing several layers of clothing which would be difficult to remove while half-asleep.

and my personal favorite:

When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell “STOP” to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind and then recite a pre-chosen Scripture or sing an inspirational hymn.

An epiphany! Mahatma Gandhi, when he sought to test the strength of his renunciation of desire, surrounded himself by naked women and then, or so the story as told by an eminent historian claims, “stared his erection into submission”. The Jesustani, as befits a virile civilization which values rugged, manly individualism above all, must stare his erection into submission in solitude, all by himself. The demons of the Jesustani’s secular world are the houris within, not the houris without.

Will the Jesustaliban win? The signs, I fear, are that virtue is loosing the battle. The Washington Post recently reported that large numbers of the brats True Love Waits-type virginity pledges claimed buggery and blow-jobs did not count as sex, as neat a bit of pambhiri and fraud as even I ever managed at school. From the mouths of innocents and babes comes the truth. As befits my years and greater wisdom, I shall go one step further: masturbation is the hope of the nations. A little handy-handy never hurt anybody. My killi never asked to be taken out to dinner, never ever complained that I never called, and absolutely never threw perfectly good crockery at me.

Mera haath Jagannath: my hand is god; and god is in my hand.

A Post-Script: A gora reader has written to The Jesustan Diaries, asking what a chutiya might be. Contributions to the cause of education are solicited.