Reflections and Ruminations

Reflections and Ruminations

Part: 3

Socrates is famously quoted as saying "The unexamined life is not worth living". My experiences with Murtaza and Basheer had been so transformative that I was perforce compelled to reflect on the nature and origin of my sexuality and desire. As a little girl I had spent a lot of time at stud farms owned by my family in Bahadurgarh and Saharanpur. While my parents relaxed with their friends in the farmhouse, I would wander around the stud farm sometimes riding, sometimes watching horses going through their paces. I grew to love horses, especially the stallions.

I would see them striding or galloping in the paddocks, their magnificent maleness displayed proudly. I always felt a strange sense of elation seeing them. Glossy skin, powerful sleek bodies, balanced on high stepping delicate hoofs, the stallion for me, was a magnificent symbol of grace and sexual prowess. They had become my metaphor for maleness. As I watched them in the paddocks and the mounting block, I would catch the syces and stable boys slyly looking at me from the corners of their eyes as the stallions covered the mares.

They seemed to be getting a lot of salacious pleasure in seeing a little girl watching the horses mating. Never bothered by it, I watched the stallions mounting the mares with brimming lust and trembling impatience. They tossed their heads wildly, mane flying as they went up on their haunches thrusting into the mare. In every intimate moment of passion with my Muslim lovers, these memories would flood back, and I would be lost in a haze of sensual enjoyment where man and stallion merged with each other in my mind until I knew not which was which.

I have been with other lovers. But South Asian Muslim men are different because of their courtly grace, and seething virility, that combine to give them an air of sheathed animality. There is a passionate sensuality tightly reined in till the restraint breaks and the Muslim Man gives vent to a fathomless lust manifesting itself in myriad lewd acts of the forbidden. As a woman you feel yourself drowning in an ocean of his desire only to come out breathless till the next wave of his ceaseless lust washes over you. It happens again and again leaving your body limp and bruised but aching all over with the sweet pain of fulfillment.

Until you feel a reawakening of desire for him to renew his assault on your softest places, explore without remorse the secret sensitive recesses of your body and penetrate the deepest core of your femineity in a final act of domination. A wail of intense pleasure breaks out of you as you surrender, submit and celebrate the shameless act of pure sexual enjoyment. Why this praise currently? Because my experiences with Murtaza and Basheer made me confront the reality of the deep attraction and intense desire that has existed for many centuries between Hindu women and Muslim men.

It's a very complex feeling -- part physical, part psychological and rooted in the culture and history of the sub-continent. I have not been ashamed to admit it. I know for a fact that many Hindu girls share this feeling. This is a ' mea culpa ' in a way, defining and exploring the sexual and sensual complexities of the feeling that underlies this preference. I would be deeply gratified if it helps my readers understand the underlying erotic emotion and its finer nuances. I express my thoughts unabashedly without shame, prevarication or deception.

I take the liberty of a brief digression about myself. I am a single Brahmin Hindu girl, belonging to an aristocratic family, who grew up in privilege. I studied at an exclusive girl's school and college in Delhi. Finished my education in the US at a very highly regarded university in the Mid-west, and work as a professional woman at a senior level. I travel widely all over the world and socialize in India and outside in very sophisticated, cultured and elite circles.

From the Vaghela queen Kamala Devi, who after capture by Allaudin Khilji became his favorite wife at the end of the 13th century, to Kamala Das the noted litterateur who was Sadiq Ali's lover and later wife, in our times, many Hindu women have enjoyed the embrace of Muslim men. Many others like Aruna Asaf Ali and contemporary Hindu girls like Tavleen Singh, Gauri Khan, Kiran Rao Khan, me and my many friends have all have found fulfillment for what Kamala Das calls "endless female hungers" in the fullness, thickness, hardness and unrestrained ardor of our Muslim lovers.

Yes, it is true Muslim men are magnificently endowed. And size does matter. But that is not the whole story. Muslim men are extremely dominant, compelling complete submission from their Hindu girlfriends. They are not hypocrites. There is no sentimentality in them. They are not bothered by our feelings. They want to satisfy their own desire. They want to possess our bodies, penetrate us to the core, occupy our body and use it for their own pleasure.

This evokes the deep sensuality of a Hindu girl's nature to respond with abandon the wild thrusting of a rampant Muslim male. (That is why I don't believe in the idea of 'love jihad'. It does not understand the essential nature of Muslim men in South Asia. They want to dominate and conquer our bodies. Yes, there is "lust jihad'' which implies domination and conquest. That is why most Muslim men don't marry Hindu girls; they just use us to satiate their own desire.) This irresistible attraction between Hindu girls and Muslim men is inextricably linked to our history of Muslim conquest.

The subtle nuances of this allurement can only be understood by South Asian Muslim men and Hindu girls who live in this social milieu. Muslim men are attracted to the brazen blazing sexuality of Hindu girls. But what is it that inspires a Hindu girl's desire for a Muslim man? Hindu girls are brought to fear the ravening lust of Muslim males. So, while there is a fear there is also a curiosity about Muslim lust. There is a desire for the forbidden as well. When confronted with the reality of a Muslim man's advances Hindu girls invariably succumb to them to explore what is feared and forbidden.

What makes Hindu girls so vulnerable to Muslim men is also the fact of their upbringing in the rituals their own religion. Hindus worship the lingam (the phallus) in their Mahadev temples. It is a tradition for Hindu girls from their childhood to worship the Lingam by putting flowers and pouring milk on it. As you grow up the significance of Lingam is not lost on girls. With greater consciousness you start seeing that it does resemble a circumcised rampant manhood. The symbolism acquires a reality when a Muslim man bares himself to reveal the full glory of a manhood you had worshiped and secretly desired.

All shame vanishes and you glory in the sensuality of his embrace as he dominates you to pleasure him in every way to the fullest. I have tried to explore the underlying reasons for the fascination that a Hindu girl has for Muslim men of India and Pakistan. Total candor gives you a feeling of liberation from prejudice. You are free to enjoy the sensuality of your nature without shame or fear. I do hope that Hindu girls, who have experienced what I did, will comment freely about their own feelings. Perhaps these reflections will enrich the appreciation of the readers regarding the experiences I have narrated and will narrate in future.