Indian Love - Digital Love
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2007
1
17
92
Trip End
Apr 20, 2009
Agra,
India
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
India has gone through many economic permutations. In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan(yes, the Neo-Con one), then ambassador to India, said with unfortunate accuracy for the time that "the only thing that India exports is communicable dieseases".
This changed pretty quickly. During the late 1970's and 1980's India began exporting cheap labour: to America, the UK and for some obscure reason Germany.
Today, India exports Love.
There are more men than women in India. Lots more. They have enough trouble finding a bride as it is but then have to ensure caste purity, financial distinction and a village well that is bountifully supplied with fresh water.
So each evening, usually the wee hours, Indian men log-in for love.
I'm watching them now, four of them, spread in front of me in an otherwise empty cyber cafe while i sit out the tedium of burning photo's to DVD.
Each has a set of headphones, whose cabling, wound and re-wound around the fingers, becomes a necessary appliance for the release of nervous energy. Each has a small camera mounted somewhere in their cubicle. I watched each of the men agonise over the position of this camera to give the most favourable angle. The trend was for an oblique aspect, where the men could still be in the frame when they recline on their chairs - remain cool.
One man chatted with his Singaporean sweetheart, and appeared on-screen dressed in light pink - a nighty maybe - and bouncing around her equally pink bedroom. Another was talking to a Korean girl, and another an American woman. I could not tell the place of the fourth man's 'interest', but he was speaking in English - like all the others.
The man chatting with the American was the loudest and hence the easiest to follow.
"Oh, my luuuuv.....Oh my de-eeeeer....My de-eeeeeer......My luuuuuv", he would say at regular intervals in a sing-song way, like a child repeating the teacher. I had gegun to think that that was all he could say. But the conversation did broaden:
"I can afford medo-cines.....My luuuuuv. Do not worreeeee"
and then:
"I have a job nooooow, in Mumbaaiiii, my luuuuuv. Do not worreeeee"
I began to think things were not going so well for the young chap. It was obvious an american rendezvous was his ambition. He was desperate to prove he had what it took, affording medicines, apparently, was what it took. Under more pressure his body curled around the microphone and he became less obvious about his conversation, withdrawn into a whisper but still repeating: "Oh, my luuuuv.....Oh my de-eeeeer....My de-eeeeeer......My luuuuuv".
Now and then "VISA" would slide into an otherwise un-decipherable sentence, but it soon became clear that he was trying to have his 'luuuuuuv' faciliate a VISA application to the United States and that this had been the purpose of the last 45 minutes of conversation. But still more encouragement was needed to win her over, and so he persisted but with bless confidence as before: "Oh, my luuuuv.....Oh my de-eeeeer....My de-eeeeeer......Oh my luuuuuv". It filled the cyber café like a pathetic mantra.
My DVD popped from the computer and I removed it from the tray. My photos were saved. I labelled the disc. Amidst my preparartions to leave, however, I missed the conclusion to the crescendo of 'my luuuuv's and my de-eeeeer's'. But things appeared amicable, somehow resolved, but I couldn't help but think that the American woman was in a hurry to leave. The young man was signing off as sentimetally as was possible for the hardware to handle- putting his fingers to his lips in a mock kiss, and then placing them on the camera lense; Drawing his face closer to the camera as if to study the sony srystal lips as a prelude to fibre-optic love making: "Goodniiight, my luuuuuuuve" he says with a new-found energy.
I am satisfied that the end of my work co-incides with the end of the young man's interlude. I prepare some last things which take 5 minutes and check the discs. Meanwhile the young man is occupied, talking smuggly with the man of South Korean aspirations between watching something on the screen. As I leave, he breaks off his discussion with his friend and moves to one side so that my view of his monitor is no longer obscured.
It is a porn film - oral sex. Without being an expert, I get the feeling it comes from California: The actors are obviously not Indian. The young man nods proudly, grins broadly, looking towards me for approval, not with any inkling that I might be offended or embarrassed- I am from the west after all; This is what we do in the West; this is our idea of love.
At least, I imagine, this is what this young Agran thinks we do. But I can tell by his expression that he doesn't understand my disdain.
I file past numbly, I am too disturbed. I connect the porn film, the pride, the grin, with the conversation I had observed with the american woman which had been so circular, so repetitive as to mean nothing; dialogue with 'ctrl C'-'ctrl V'. It seemed so denigrating. I pictured a meeting between them sometime in the future, VISA secured, trying awkwardly to move from their digital, plastic love into a physical relationship: the man trying to balance the relationship between endearing words and porn, then, back to endearing words, then back to porn, and then maybe more endearing words. This was all that was necessary to live a life with a woman of the West. This was 21st century love as in India.
I shuffled up the stairs to our hotel room.
"I just witnessed a really weird thing downstairs Steen,"
"What is it?"
"Maybe, I'll tell you in the morning."
