Sarah's Picture Book.
Sarah Maitland sat propped in bed under her mosquito net, a lamp shedding light on the outsize portfolio on her knee. Outside, night enclosed the Gangetic plain. India slept in moist heat. It was midnight.
The book was precious and she had an opportunity to bid for it through Sotheby's, although opposition was being posted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Expensive, but the story of this unique work of art was compelling. She would love it in her library.
Sir Elijah and Lady Impey had presided at Calcutta in the 1770s and 1780s where he had served as Chief Justice. She was young, he old and often travelling. Lady Impey had engaged gifted Indian artists. They had produced marvellous pencil, ink and water colour studies- of the Impey family, of domestic scenes, of their friends, of their garden menagerie or zoo.
One artist, Bhawani Das, was the most prolific. His paintings of cross-banded bats, black hooded oriels, spotbilled pelicans were masterpieces. Why not? The artist had made his name with Mughal rulers and the Raj had seen his value and recruited his talents.
Then, this one painting presents itself. It marked a tectonic shift. Opened a new universe. It had been painted in 1777. It was of a male fruit bat. With it, the artistic vision and that of his patron, young Lady Impey, somersaulted and took new direction.
A male fruit bat. Of all things.
The artist was acutely sensitive to the shape and texture of the great fruit bat, with the graceful curve of its ears and the soft furry body. One wing is stretched as if it were the cape of a Venetian opera house commendatore, ushering women into a performance of Handel or Vivaldi, rather than a creature in a colonial menagerie.
But what this stretched wing reveals is the revelation.
Nothing less than a splendidly highlighted genitalia. A downward pointing but hard penis shaft- black brown with pink glans- and two fat balls sticking out at the sides, symmetrical to a fault.
No animal has genitalia so alike those of the boys in this school, thought Sarah. Was it real? She hadn't seen the species. Or was Das, the artist, having a joke? Arousing his mistress?
From this portrait the paintings Das produces take a dramatic turn.
The next 187 pages in the brick-like portfolio are head to toe portraits of young Indian men of every ethnicity and social status. In none is the male wearing clothes- except in some cases headress or sandals. There are holy men or ascetics with their portable altars, labourers with lean muscles, sepoys with their colourful regimental uniforms not to be sighted, Purjaris with box hats and turbans emphasising their nudity, musicians naked and drums and flute held off to one side so as not to obscure any view, grooms holding the reins of carriage horses and a servant with black hair in a pony tail and carrying a gold and red embroided umbrella.
All stark naked.
In birthday suits.
Stripped bare to stand and face this artist.
The young men had every detail captured by the genius painter, from the fuzz on their cheeks to the gauzy hair on their scrotums, every wrinkle of a foreskin, the mottling of a glans, the veins that snaked a penis stem. The colour variation was subtle and his palate extensive. He had not hesitated to show the cocks in every state of extension or inflation including- oh, Sarah guessed- about 10 to 20 percent in states of total engorgement, seen in profile or full-on.
The same attention to detail Das had lavished on the lines of an Aroid leaf or Indian Bloodsucker lizard he expended on the nude male bodies. As gorgeously as he captured the Malaga's Giant Squirrel or Shawl Goat of Bhutan he as deftly captured the wrinkles of a frenulum or drape of a scrotum.
Thrillingly for Sarah many of the young males look abashed at this exposure. As if, perhaps, they knew it was headed for young Lady Impey and her circle. That English ladies they might meet the next day would have dilated on their nude forms.
The implications were...well, delightful.
And, Sarah thought, from the earliest years of British rule.
She would have liked to have known this young Lady Impey. So much they might have shared. So much. She reached out and turned off the lamp. The tropical night enclosed all. From under her pillow she produced her elephant tusk.
The Trials of George Applewhite.
"You can leave your clothes here," said Miss Plimmer, her gaunt features tight with excitement. "You will not be wearing them for the rest of the day."
Her voice expired with suppressed emotion. Seeing this young teacher in this condition was plainly thrilling.
Standing in front of her, already naked apart from his mortarboard, George Applewhite jolted. Nude? Not just for the lesson he was about to teach in front of girls but the rest of the day at school?
His erection firmed. It was a telltale stiffening. It revealed his subterranean desire.
Miss Plimmer, the principal's secretary, noticed. Her lips curled in a smile. She had thrilled to the sight of naked boys at this school. But he was the first teacher she had seen forced to present himself wearing only birthday suit, every inch of his 22 year old body exposed.
Beverly Burrowes, his fellow teacher, also looked down into George's groin, with her own prurient curiosity. She was becoming familiar with her colleague's petite cock. And more than that- she relished his shame at having to display it. George Applewhite nude- apart from that silly mortarboard! She loved to see him shiver and shake with shame.
She gestured towards the door and the three of them stepped out to walk down the corridor with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and, hanging on its walls, faded portraits of fat British royals and English pastoral scenes.
A sari-clad maid, on her knees washing the floor, looked up and took in the naked Englishman and the two dressed females. She noticed the young teacher's penis- his "linga"- was sticking up and out. George saw her look. Oh hell, thought George, I'm buck naked in front of a brown-skinned cleaning lady. And, worse, I'm hard as a board. With a Herculean effort he willed himself to avoid throwing his hands over his groin.
But he felt a kindling in his veins, a funny fluttering in his tummy. This Indian servant, old enough to be his mother, could see him in his birthday suit. And see him erect. And being escorted by dressed females. His humiliation was, he thought, awful...
...and delicious.
Then the cleaning lady in her sari, on her knees, broke into a mocking grin.
Her 19 year old boy had a longer linga, and broader too. She knew because after she had come to clean the floors of Sarah's school she had seen the naked punishment inflicted on young males. She had found that it was called murgha. So she had adopted it in her own home. And while her son didn't like it- a tall boy of 18, plain and shy and subject to teasing and taunts- his sisters certainly relished it, and all the village girls had taken to visiting their little hut by the river. She loved seeing her boy shivery and shamed, standing hands behind his back, with the girls gathered around. And loved the moment when his linga- wide and brown, with a bright red head- filled out and stood up.
The English trio walked past her. She turned to watch, scanning George's white bottom. Yes, she loved that view too, of her son. His tight bottom cheeks- his shabdkosh, his nitamb- only her boy's were nut brown. Delicious, this teacher's were a shameful white, clenching and unclenching as he walked away between the two ladies.
Miss Plimmer stopped.
"Goodness, I forgot Miss Maitland's belt!"
"Belt?"
"Sarah wants us- wants you- to lash him. In front of the girls. As part of his punishment."
Miss Plimmer turned and clacked back to the principal's office.
Beverly looked at her colleague, the nude and trembling George Applewhite under the mortarboard. Lash. She would have to lash him. On that bottom. Her "cunnie"- the word familiar from the Victorian literature- dampened. Her "mount of Venus" warmed. She beamed, he swallowed nervously.
She remembered something.
"The letter I put in your pocket?" she whispered
He nodded.
