After more than a decade around boats, and for earlier living in Goa, whose only relevance here is that it happens to have a seashore, I am routinely treated as a know-all repository for anything remotely connected to ships and vessels. Of all the questions I get, the one I detest most, and about which I know virtually nothing except having seen a few lined up for scrapping at Alang, concern cruise liners.
To be fair, I did predict the failure of India’s first homegrown cruise ship even before its maiden voyage. Like most of my negative prognoses, that too came true. But my dislike for cruise liners has nothing to do with ships. It has everything to do with the people asking the questions.
The questions are never about ships, routes, costs or even seasickness. The most common one is - whether it is true that one can avail of intimate services on board, in massage parlours and saunas, the “happy ending” kind, while their families lounge on deck and pose for photos. Why go through the trouble of a cruise when you could just fly to Thailand or walk into a friendly neighbourhood massage parlour? I ask back.
The queriers are invariably nouveau riche, all whoremongers. Without exception, each with an equally insipid Instagramming wife. Some attractive trophy spouses acquired after striking it big. Others, plain and pudgy, latched on remnants from the struggling years, or whose father bankrolled their success, now desperately competing with the former for status and the perfect holiday social media post.
Apparently, local joints are too risky scandal-wise, and their wives do not allow stag trips to the kingdom. Nor are they left out of sight for even a second when travelling together.
A decade and a half spent trying to modernise inland water transport and river travel safety, all reduced to one burning question - can we get a happy ending on a cruise ship?
Adding insult to injury is that I have exactly zero personal experience with the world’s oldest, or perhaps second-oldest, profession - an alternate view claims stealing came first. And despite the stereotypes about male sexual behaviour, I know from my friends’ stories that I am not alone in this space.
One narrated how, pressured during college, he joined an en masse brothel visit in Mumbai and ended up sitting on a balcony bench while the others took turns inside. At some point, one of the women waiting for clients sat beside him and offered him some of the Channa Jor (spiced lentils) she was munching on.
Another, visited me in Delhi and undertook what was, for him, the adventure of a lifetime - a solo trip to Agra and Mathura. He returned baffled. The hotel room-service attendant in Agra, was an attractive female and in her mid to late thirties. She knocked at night to ask if he needed anything. Having forgotten his shaving kit, he asked her to buy one. She returned, lingered at the door, and asked if he was sure he did not want anything else. When he said no, she gave him a long, puzzled look and left. He never figured it out.
Then there is the regular fare of men entering cathouses, getting emotionally overwhelmed, asking the women why they are in the profession, listening to well-rehearsed sob stories, paying a sympathy fee, and walking out untouched. One was even slapped for wasting time with stupid questions. Another was tossed out with a stern rebuke "that she was a Musalman ki Beti and doesn't do any shaitani kaam" but he was a real pervert, so his story doesn't count here!
One story that stands apart is of a friend who decided to indulge an African fantasy in Thailand. The woman was young and glamorous until she undressed and revealed a long, deep, healed gash across her back, inflicted with a machete by soldiers who had attacked her village when she was young. His libido collapsed instantly. He paid her and asked her to leave. His first and last experience with paid love.
The only time I was ever in proximity to a woman who provided intimate services for a fee was both by accident and compulsion. We were at a post-marriage party of a close friend, whose relatives and obnoxious in-laws were in competition to drain the room of oxygen. Though we were promised a ride back, a friend and I had enough and decided to leave early. The venue was a remote resort on the outskirts of town, with sketchy network coverage and getting transport was a tall task.
Then someone called out my friend’s name from one of the cabins. We got our free ride back, but with conditions. First, we had to join him for a couple of rounds. He was dark, loud and a squat runt with gold chains around his neck and rings on every finger. With him was what is politely called an escort - a well-endowed college girl, a head taller than him, with a face you would not remember even if you saw her daily.
For the next hour he hurled obscenities at her, calling her a slut and a whore punctuated with drunken shouts of “Russiaaaan,” hands outstretched in my direction like in a Bollywood wooing song. To express his camaraderie with me, he even switched from whisky to vodka, which was instrumental in helping him pass out. She absorbed the abuse calmly, mostly ignoring him, either playing games or texting on her phone. Occasionally smiled and retorted softly, once accusing him of being all talk and not gifting her the iPhone he had promised.
Fed up, my friend stood up to go searching for a cab, and just then the fellow collapsed. His driver dragged him to the car. My friend jumped into the front seat. The snoring toad was dumped on one side of the back seat, the girl sat in the middle, and I on the other. Three plus-sized bodies in a small saloon make for a snug fit, which meant a warm, nice smelling soft female body pressed pleasantly against mine.
She giggled shyly most of the way back. We dropped her at her hostel. She thanked me with a wide smile for being nice and wished me goodnight as I held the door open.
Later, my friend who knew them well explained their arrangement. He was a crass scoundrel with several shady inherited businesses, who got sozzled the same way every evening. She was a professional, who mostly provided company and tolerated his crap.
Back in Thailand, while riding in a songthaew, a female friend, deep into sociology, suddenly asked me “Why do men visit prostitutes?” No idea why she thought I had answers, but I replied as best I could - some men have low self-esteem, others want to bypass the drama and bullshit of courting or seduction. Both tend to have a low threshold of standards.
Some just need someone to talk to.
My comic grouse with the country is that despite being considered the world’s top sex-tourism destination, I was never solicited there even once, across two visits. Not complaining, but I still can't figure out whether they considered me an alien or a monk. The first time, the only attention I received was from a ladyboy conductor on an overnight bus.
The second time, in Bangkok, I observed tuk-tuk drivers loudly trying to entice a group of Indian men walking ahead of me with shopping and “boom boom” complete with hand gestures. Then, noticing me, they became a little self-conscious and politely offered to take me to Wat Arun and the Sleeping Buddha.
My manhood, once again, was thoroughly ignored...
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