How Mastram saved me and my generation

Randy schoolboys had nothing going for them before the early 1970s. Internet was still being developed in laboratories. Videos were still in the future. Import of magazines from the West couldn't get past the Customs. Local talent by way of films or publications was non-existent. Societal mores severely limited gender intermingling. Disposal incomes were low and avenues of social interaction and entertainment, frugal. Your dad either had an Ambassador or a Fiat, or maybe just a Lambretta or a Vespa, and he refused to let you drive it.

If you were horny, those were bleak times indeed.

But we all survived. And we have Mastram and Rasavanti to thank for it.

Nick Carter would probably get the consolation prize. James Hadley Chase didn't quite make the cut. Lolita, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ulysses were too niche and one-off experiences. The need of the day was an assembly line of erotica. Mastram and Rasavanti fitted the bill perfectly.

They were, however, less convenient to buy in places such as Delhi, where the outlets were located in the grimier parts, than places such as, say, Meerut. The limited copies were liberally passed around and the circulation never waned, never mind if you had already read it. You were always ready for a second reading. Not very long after the purchase, the magazines bore the stamp of a much read piece of literature: well-thumbed, underlined at places, pictorially embellished by an artistic reader at other places. All in all, they were best-sellers with a very contended, and grateful, readership. But they had better be returned to their owner eventually. They were just too precious to be lax about their whereabouts.

Our school sent a bunch of boys to Palampur to attend the annual NCC camp. As soon as the train halted at Pathankot station, the school boys made a bee-line for the bookshop outside the station. Intelligence reports received by the earlier year's delegation spoke highly of this mecca for the frustrated teenagers. And what a well-equipped store it turned out to be! It had the latest issue; it had the back issues of both the magazines in more than adequate quantities - such that no boy went back disappointed. Since the boys were carrying money for the trip, payment was no issue. In any case, the magazines were affordable and well within any schoolboy's pocket money allowance.

The production values of these "pondies" were spartan. They were black-and-white. Even though the form was third-rate, they more than made up in content. The stories were rich in description, the imagination mind-boggling, and the language unrestrained (our vocabulary, Hindi and English, improved dramatically). There was never a dull moment and the magazines were simply unputdownable. They were read in classrooms, in school buses, in bathrooms, during sports practice. Never openly, always furtively. They were read at home with the door firmly locked; they were read under the quilt under flashlight if your sibling shared the room.

At the NCC camp, our brazenness got us into trouble. During a routine inspection of tents, some boys were found reading the magazines. A more thorough search unearthed the entire cache. We feared expulsion from the camp and rustication from school. At the very least we expected a bonfire of the captured contraband to serve as warning to the other contingents. But none of it happened. All the magazines were confiscated and taken away to the officers' and men's quarters for their reading pleasure. 

Who said Mastram and Rasavanti were only reserved for the young?

In college, there was no dramatic amelioration. Things still remained grim. Sasthi Brata valiantly tried to satisfy the lustful appetite for the carnal word. Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler were the aspirational must-haves. Only a lucky few whose broad-minded uncles had gone abroad, and who had managed to give customs the slip, had these magazines. These boys were put on a pedestal and became hugely popular. The models had to be ogled at in the presence of the magazine-owner who would be loath to let it out of his sight unless he was willing to sacrifice the centrefold!

No one was interested in the serious, intellectually stimulating articles that these magazines featured. Let's keep that for a future reading; let's just concentrate on Cindy Crawford, should we?

Blue films were a rarity. Videos, VCDs, DVDs had not yet reached our shores. Only the wealthy had film projectors. The rank and file of the youth brigade had their best chances when international film festivals came to Delhi. One incident is still etched in memory.

The Shankar Lal Auditorium of Delhi University was hosting Siddhartha. All tickets had been sold out. While the hall was full, the lawns outside were teeming with hopefuls. During the screening, there was an attempt made to storm the hall and though the police did a creditable job in stemming the march of the gate-crashers, some intrepid souls did manage to break through and every square inch of the hall had a human body occupying it. Nobody had come to appreciate the film adaptation of Herman Hesse's novel; no one had come to marvel at Conrad Rook's directorial ability. The hordes came to see the brief nude scene of Simi Grewal lasting about 30 seconds in an hour and half film. Many left soon thereafter.

People used to stand in queues the whole night in winters to buy tickets of "hot" films when the counter opened in the morning. Two tickets were allowed per head. Government officers - with contacts in the Directorate of Film Festivals - were much sought after. 

A foreign taste

I officially bought my first Penthouse in the 1980s whilst in Paris. And what an issue it turned out to be! It contained the interview of Rajiv Gandhi, the then prime minister. He was interviewed by Russel Warren Howe, the renowned right-wing and freelance journalist. When the Indian Embassy got wind of the impending publication, it shot off protest letters to Bob Guccione, Penthouse editor-publisher, and Howe. The letter accused Howe of committing a breach of faith because the interview had been conducted for a book on statesmanship in the 20th century, while Guccione was told that the sale of the interview to his magazine was a violation of journalistic ethics.

The magazine, however, claimed that it was entirely within its rights to publish the interview with a world leader whose opinions were of interest to its readers. Howe insisted that he had committed no breach of faith and claimed that the Embassy had known of his affiliations with Penthouse and his intention to sell it to the magazine.

Be that as it may, the magazine, as always , had a diverse range of weighty, thought-proving articles, profiles (Yannick Noah), essays, comments, humour , satire, news , and Xaviera Hollander's "Call me Madam" - the agony aunt giving sexual advice. Of course, all this serious business was interspersed with naked women, not-so-explicit sex and celebrity pin-ups.

The hullabaloo was both understandable, yet incomprehensible. Playboy, for example, has interviewed Steve Jobs, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Bertrand Russell, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Malcolm X, Albert Schweitzer and Ayn Rand, while authors such as Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Roald Dahl, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury and Gabriel García Márquez have published episodic stories and articles for the magazine. The magazines have enough repute to interview the international who's who. The magazine is an adult men's magazine, true; but not solely for titillation, but as a domain for the thinking man as well.

Rajiv's mother was interviewed by the French adult magazine Oui in 1973 by José-Luis de Vilallonga Sacred and titled "Cows aren't easy to milk". Rajiv's grandfather was interviewed by Playboy in 1963. Here too the Indian Embassy  claimed that the interview with Nehru was not, in fact, the result of an exclusive, personal conversation with the head of the Indian state, but simply a gathering together of public pronouncements made by the prime minister in various speeches, statements, etc., over the past several years. The magazine clarified that the Nehru material was submitted to them by a well-regarded journalist-publisher who had previously conducted numerous similar interviews with famous personages all over the world; it was sold as an actual interview, recorded on tape, and the covering letters that so described the material also included photographs of the prime minister and journalist together. There was no reason to doubt its validity and they consequently published it in good faith as a personal interview. 

As good as it gets

The current batch of schoolboys has never had it so good. And school girls too! The entire landscape has undergone a fundamental metamorphosis. Technology, economic progress, liberalisation, changed social mores, have conspired to ensure instant and unfettered gratification. The repressed sexual climate of the 1960s bears no resemblance to today and one is free now to express oneself sexually and culturally. Libertarian views now inform a variety of social issues.

So much so that Mastram and other magazines of its ilk have lost their relevance. Even internationally, pornographic magazines have lost their shock value, their commercial value and their cultural pertinence. Recently, Playboy announced that that it will no longer run photos of completely naked women. In a way it has become a victim of the forces it helped unleash. Since now porn is only a click away - that too free - nude photographs are passé. Full nudity had already been banned from the magazine's website in August 2014. Ironically, website audience soared with that move, averaging a 400 per cent increase in monthly unique visitors.

As an ode to Mastram's yeoman's service to the legions of the libidinous schoolboys, a film of the same name has been made. The film is about a reluctant pornographic writer who aspires to be a litterateur, but cannot find a publisher for his book. He adopts the pseudonym of Mastram and churns out his pornographic novel series, which becomes a hit.

For my generation, for whom reading Mastram, Playboy and others was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill, the phasing out or the revamping of these magazines may be the right decision, but the 16-year-old in me is very disappointed.