Pervert's Progress

Last month, a young lady of Louisville reported a tale of horror such that it would make the armpit-hair of any self-respecting, pure desi kudi stand on end. She had hailed a taxi to return home from the Fourth Street Live entertainment complex, a taxi which turned out to be the proverbial sheep’s clothing on a rapacious wolf, a villain and pervert named Martin Jackson.

Now, those of you who have watched films with titles like Hot White Chicks and Chadhti Jawani, or in the alternate have read the crime section of New Delhi’s newspapers, will know exactly what happened next. Martin Jackson stripped Our Lady Of Louisville down to her bra and panties, bound and blindfolded her and then… and then… and then… took pictures of her feet.

Yes, took pictures. Of her feet. And off she went, none the worse for wear.

Martin Jackson is not the only pervert to have been driven to these bizarre extremes. Not too long ago, in a wildlife park near the scenic town of Albany, New Hampshire, the police pulled out a 45-year-old man from the septic tank under a public toilet in a park, his chosen machan for peering at women's backsides. He was caught by a fourteen year old girl who saw him mired, quite literally, in shit (what she was doing peering down the toilet into the septic tank I do not know).

Arresting the man turned out to be a major military enterprise, only a touch less hazardous than the search for Osama bin-Laden. Special teams who deal with toxic waste were called in to wash down the man, since taking him to prison in that condition would have counted as a human rights abuse far in excess of anything seen at Abu Ghraib (of the other prisoners, that is). Even the very hard-bitten Captain Jon Hebert, an expert pervert-buster who I am told has seen more of the dregs of humanity that anyone in a thousand-kilometer radius of Caroll County, was obliged to say: “I started this business in 1980, and I have never in my career encountered anybody in this type of situation”.

It is hideous, isn’t it: that man should be reduced to drowning himself in tatti just to have the satisfaction of doing something that society forbids.

Truth is, there have been perverts since the dawn of humanity. Perverts derive both pride and pleasure from their perversions, i.e. their practice of practices other people do not practice. Nothing that is not unusual counts as a true perversion. Rape, for example, is not a perversion. As any criminologist will tell you, rape is a common community and family pastime, although particularly bored armies do practice it sometimes. To borrow from that great philosopher Bob Marley, “doctors do it, lawyers do it, and players of instruments, too”. Rape is completely mainstream, and, as my friend General Pervez Musharraf has recently tried to point out, barely even counts as crime.

Perverts, it is important to note, are not to be confused with deviants, deviants being the kinds of people who chop up infants with chainsaws, bugger little boys, or demolish perfectly good mosques from behind which you could, once upon a time, score some decent weed. Perverts are people of artistic sensibilities; deviants, on the other hand, are people whose sensibilities are in urgent need of 1,000 milligrams of Haloperidol, administered up the buttocks (turpentine and stinging nettle, for the ayurvedic-inclined, also works well, sometimes better than modern medicine. Turpentine was first experimented with to punish young men who got laid before I did, with gratifying results: first you convince them they have gonorrhea, then you tell them turpentine is a disinfectant, and then you call their Mummy-Ji to say that Munna’s killi suddenly looks like a sausage that has just been worked on with a cheese grater, not that I mean to give anyone ideas)

In Hindustan, we have plenty of good old-fashioned perverts: wander-stark-naked-down-Janpath-disguised-as-Hanuman-the-Monkey-God perverts, play-with-your-own-penis-in-public-places perverts, sit-for-the-Civil-Services-Exam perverts, etc. Our societies still offer plenty of opportunities for perverts, because our cultures forbid everything, on a point of principle. Taboo is the default option. Now, I know some people complain about this, but the fact is it serves a useful social purpose. Once upon a time, when White Master was White Master and the sun never set on his lands, the Angrez, too, was like us. Victorian pornographic post-cards, for example, carried images of men’s walking-sticks accidentally lifting up women’s tent-like skirts a few inches, and thus displaying their ankles. In nineteenth century London, the sight of a naked female ankle caused spontaneous ejaculations, as it still does in Doon School, Dehradun. A little perversion, it should be evident, saves all concerned a great deal of trouble.

In Jesustan, by contrast, liberty has wreaked havoc. Nothing is forbidden here, as readers of The Jesustan Diaries well know. Nudity in public places? Ho, hum, tedium. Whips and leather? Come on, get serious. Shagging animals? A lifestyle choice. Penis-cages? Passe! Sticking cigars up women’s vaginas? For god’s sake, the last King of Jesustan did it; even his successor, Beloved Leader, has never actually denied that he enjoys having cigars stuck up his butt, as long as it is not made in Cuba. So what is a poor pervert to do? The man in Albany could have peered up the backsides of as many naked women without diving into a septic tank, but his need to be a real, authentic pervert would not have been met. He would have just been one among many. He had to risk his health, even his life, to find satisfaction. Ditto, Martin Jackson.

These men are martyrs, martyrs of a society that has become so free that it is longer possible to break any rules.

Unless, of course you choose to to actually smoke a cigar instead of using it as a dildo, and ideally in a public place. Now that, ye, is a true, blue-blooded perversion, perhaps the last it is still possible to practice in Jesustan.