How some are trying to free kinky sex of morality in India

For those who believe in absolute desire and find pleasure in pain, the story is not about kinky sex but about submission and trust and breaking free.

• "Hormones raging,
• heart racing,
• I raise my hands,
• And she's screaming, crying,

• Stab, stab, stab and jabbing,
• I started shouting, chanting and providing ..."

-Abuse by Kelvin

She spoke with a fixed stare, a cigarette between her fingers, a glass of wine on the side. She also spoke in measured sentences, and we never looked each other in the eye. She spoke of desire, and fantasy, and whips, and chains. I was struggling not to judge.

The woman, who was in her 50s, was one of the founders of Kinky Collective that was set up in Delhi in 2011 where a bunch of practitioners of BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) had got together to review consent, confront the taboos, and figure out ways to talk about themselves as "normal" and not possessed people as they suspected the world viewed them.

One of their agendas was to mainstream conversations around BDSM, but they were almost an underground society, and except her, no one revealed their names. They thought of themselves as liberal, and rebellious. They came together to find partners to play with. It is lonely out there because there is always the fear of being dismissed as one suffering with a pathological disorder, she said.

The rules had been laid out. No judgment, she had said before she would speak of the dark desires, the pleasure of pain, and the liberation of surrender, and the fetishes. She was into submission, and although she was a feminist, she felt the submission let her explore a part of her she had always fantasised about. She would call her partners "hazoor" even.

It started in London where she saw a woman on the floor in submission, and her face showed no trace of humiliation. There was something poetic about it, she had said then.

It had been difficult to understand her submission in the context of her life as a feisty activist, and a feminist. But fantasy was another realm, and only the courageous acted on their desires. She had even danced on an item number once when her dom had asked her to do it. She rehearsed, and complied. There was a liberty in submission, and nobody got why she would surrender so much in role play when, in fact, she was a woman who has made her choices, and is single. She said it was role play. There was a scope to live multiple lives, she said.

"What amazed me when I came into the world of BDSM at the ripe age of 46 (I think) was that BDSM could make me experience these things without necessarily falling in love. Let's leave the bit about the void within aside for a moment. But the other things for sure. I've had sessions with strangers in hotel rooms which made me feel that crazy connect. That intensity. That merging with the other. And it really makes me wonder, not just 'think' in an intellectual, abstract way, about what love really is if BDSM can make me feel these things with a strange... This coincided with my discovery of myself as a slut. Which was truly liberating, especially for me as a feminist. I experienced in my body and spirit and mind the de-linking of love from intensity and passion and fusion," she wrote in an email.

"My very first session, was with a stranger, for three days, in Rishikesh. Super intense and mind-blowing. When we came back and parted ways at the Delhi railway station, he sent me an ams - DFIL. When I messaged him back and asked him what that meant he said 'Don't Fall in love'. A remarkably wise man. He knew how easy it is to mistake the intensity of the erotic for love. To this day I thank him."

But before she spoke about the first sessions, one of which included a command by her master to lie down naked on stones on wood in a hilly town until a butterfly came and perched itself on her body, she ensured the terms were in place. There would be no factual errors, or any judgment calls, she said.

They had never spoken in the open about their kinks, and the community feared extreme reactions. For this, the names would have to be kept anonymous, she had said. Besides, the terminology needed to be correct.

"We call them tools, not paraphernalia," she had written regarding the handcuffs, the whips, the cages, and the strap-ons.

And this is an orientation, and an exploration of sexuality that involves domination and submission, and a trip to fantasy, she said. It is theatrical, and involves costumes even.

The community, she said, was created to find genuine practitioners of BDSM, and facilitate meetings, and arrange for training sessions. There are social networking sites like Facebook, but they are stricter with security and filters. Besides, there are nodal contacts who are gold members who do referrals, and it is much more controlled to ensure safety and anonymity.

***

For the uninitiated, there was a photo exhibition three years ago at Lado Sarai, and she said in order to understand, it was essential to see these first. These had been taken by the members of the community, and at the Abadi Art Gallery, they hung on nondescript walls. No captions. Only images. A woman licking away from a bowl, a face wrapped in cellophane, stillettoes digging deep into a man's throat, and dog collars around a woman's throat. No faces. Shadows, silhouettes, and whips, and melting wax, and silent screams.

These photographs weren't explicit. Nor aesthetic. The purpose was only to start a conversation, and break the prevalent stereotype that BDSM allows for misogyny as it allows for a master and slave relationship.

It wasn't about gender, she had said, as she puffed away at a cigarette at the terrace of the gallery. She had been wearing black that night like most other members. In the game of dominance and submission, they had moved beyond gender stereotypes. A male could submit, and a female could whip a man into obedience. Everything was theatrical. It wasn't even about sex, she said. It was about letting go. It was about control. It was all about conflicts, and it wasn't about love. It was pure erotica. Why live in denial, she said.

The exhibition that was attended only by a few people travelled to other cities. They were seeking to dispel myths about the community, and enable the members to come out of the closet. But it wasn't easy. There were many who were trapped in marriages where the partner was not into BDSM, and that made them feel isolated, and deprived. They needed to satisfy their need to be either dominated, or to dominate.

In India, it is even more difficult because labels abound. For a man to be submissive is considered "sissy behaviour".

It was EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey that started the conversation around BDSM, but the members had burned the book in protest. They said it was a gross misrepresentation of the community. Consent, they said, is sacred to the practitioners.

BDSM is an acronym combined of several phrases - bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism. She, who shall not be named against her consent, is a feminist, and has been part of the women's movement in India. She is also a supporter of the LGBT movement and an activist. She is articulate to the point where her conversations about her own experiences as a practitioner sound more like philosophy, and border on spiritualism. She said her first few experiences led her to a state of surrender. She was alone in the ecstasy of pain, and the collapse of ego. She said she wouldn't judge herself for her fantasies. They were part of the subconscious, and were being transformed into a theatrical play, which gave her a chance to be what she wasn't in her other life.

As a submissive, she said she was drawn by the intensity of the session, and the timelessness of it. It wasn't about the person who was in the role of a dominatrix. It was about the self, and this many in the vanilla world failed to understand or at least were in denial of, she said.

Albert Camus had once said:

• "Live to the point of tears."
• Or how they would laugh and say now.
• "No pain, no gain."

***

Within the community, there are recommendations and referrals, and the members try to ensure new people seeking an experience and a session are not taken for a ride, another BDSM practitioner said. He is a lawyer based in Kolkata, and says trust is a key factor. He now initiates new members into BDSM and identifies himself as a "Switch". His own tryst with BDSM started early on when he used to imagine scenes of kidnapping, and pictured himself blindfolded - getting whipped by a female dominatrix. He hadn't known the terminology then, but believes that this is not a lifestyle choice as many perceive it to be, but a natural orientation.

Like many others, he had found himself lonely in his fantasies, and thought he was sick. It was only in 1993 that he travelled to Bombay and had a session with a woman who penetrated him with a strap-on, and invited him for more sessions and even when he was yelling with pain, he was ecstatic. He hadn't mentioned BDSM in his personal relationships fearing judgment. That's the difficult part. Everyone judges, he says.

It is for this reason alone that the community is mostly underground, and operates through a controlled network. They have their own rules, and list out the hard and the soft limits, and stress on safe words. If rules are broken, the community denounces and shames the offender, and makes sure they aren't able to engage in more sessions. There are consent forms online, and they have a primer on hard and soft limits, and safe words.

“The fear is not of being exploited or abused. It is not a negative fear. The fear converts into a sense of surrender. I am ready to take what you give me. That is the high. Even an ordinary person can do it. When you take a flight, you consent to hand over your life to the hands of the pilot. Similarly, we constantly surrender in daily life," he  said in an earlier interview:

• "Spank Me
• Yes, sir, I want you to spank me
• With that hand I know so well
• It is more than just five fingers
• It’s the reason I rebel"

- by Irony

They hold meetings that they call "manch" and sometimes, they organise "kinky sessions" where they exchange "kinky currency" and play with each other. Even before the Kinky Collective, these meetings were being organised and arranged via internet chat forums. Nodal members would initiate newcomers, and invite them for sessions. These would either be paid for, or be offered for free. But consent was imperative, and they discussed hard and soft limits before engaging in a session.

They hold the view that BDSM is a lifestyle, and alternative sexuality. It doesn't mean they are perverts. Desire is absolute, she said. The mind is an endless repertoire of dreams. To act on them is to claim one's freedom. And even if it is bloodsport, it is with consent. They don't devalue consent, and that's what establishes the sanity of the practitioners. In fact, they claim BDSM is not even about sex. It is about power exchange.

In India, there are taboos around such practices. They said they are cautious, and afraid of speaking about their fetishes. There was too much at stake, and most, when they narrated their experiences, had felt lonely and thought themselves to be sick in the mind when they figured that pornography didn't excite them as much as it triggered desire in others. They had been looking for more, and hadn't known what it would be that would satiate their urges.

The man hails from a small town in Rajasthan, and said he was initiated into BDSM by a homemaker who would stub cigarette butts in his body when he was around 17 or 18 years of age. He said he used to run errands for her, and one day she had asked him to massage her feet, and then lick them eventually. He said he was into a foot fetish, and then he was servicing more women at the behest of his mistress.

He discovered his own surrender, and said in his other life, he was a bully, and notorious for it. But she made him explore his other side, and he even proposed marriage to her, and when she, who was 18 years older than him, refused, he became depressed, and later moved to Chandigarh for studies, and experimented with bisexuality, and orgies, but remained in the closet, and then found internet chat forums where he connected instantly, and was happy he wasn't being judged for what he had thought was the pervert side of him.

But he was a man, and in the society that he was part of, a man had to be manly enough. His penchant for submission would be dismissed as "sissy behaviour", he figured. He had once mustered enough courage to tell a woman he liked to be dominated, and would be her slave, but she had turned around and said he'd better seek help from a shrink, and walked away. Only at a manch, he met people he could be open with, and later married a woman, who grew up in Delhi, and was part of the community. When they met, he was exploring his dom side, and she was a sub. They started facing issues when she realised his sub side was dissatisfied, and asked him to consider an open marriage. It would help them keep their love intact, she said.

But they had to be mindful of the society, and they chose their partners to play with from the set of people they knew, and who were part of the community.

At the cafe, they had both looked completely in sync with each other, and as they began to speak in animated tones about their fantasies, the husband looked around, and lowered his voice. They had to be careful. Later, people asked me how they looked like. They had looked like you and I.

They were the anonymous couple. They refused to give names, or any other reference points that could reveal their identity. The wife is a medical practitioner, and the husband is a businessman. Beyond the intimate details of their sessions, and the fact that they wanted the society to be more understanding about how it viewed BDSM, they revealed nothing more.

Their phone numbers are saved as BDSM Wife, and BDSM Husband on my phone. The others I haven't revealed because they had made me promise anonymity before they spoke. This, in itself, speaks more about the fears of the community, and not all those fears are misplaced.

***

The woman, who first met me, and introduced me to the community, said it was difficult to open up to strangers. She could, and she had made that choice, but others couldn't afford to. There was too much at stake.

"From the experience of the couple in your story it's also clear how important it is to delink love from the erotic. They were not being able to meet their erotic needs with each other after a point but still loved each other. And they still do and are fulfilling their erotic needs with others - so erotica and love are different and they can occupy different realms (Although they can also come together.). I have played with close friends with whom I don't have a romantic sexual dynamic. The energy that flowed between us had a power to heal the ruptures in our friendship. I'm saying this because these were friends I loved. And it's a reminder that love is not just sexual, romantic love. BDSM helped me dip into the intensity of the friendship which is beyond the realm of words. Yes, that's the other thing we can learn from BDSM about love. Love attracts us because we need to enter that deeper, non-rational realm beyond words. And yet we tend to use the mode of language and rationality and mutuality in love relationships. Especially when we have problems. And we often fail in our efforts to resolve the problems in our love relationships in this way. I'm not saying BDSM has an answer to this but BDSM does allow us to experience that realm beyond words, rationality and mutuality. (For instance, I do this for you so you should do this for me.)  And maybe this is the realm where we can meet some of our deeper primal psychic needs not in the language and structure of the construct of love... We, as progressive people, have to be more reasonable and measured when we are in love I feel...What do we expect from love. What can we expect from love," she wrote in her last email.

And she would still remain anonymous for the sake of others, and for herself.