Hanky Spanky

From: subdomforu
Date: Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:37 am
Subject: Re: Thank you for making our ‘games’ successful

Hi Monisha,
I am 26 years old. From Mumbai and am a manager in a MNC.

I would be interested in this. I have experienced some sort of pain earlier. Would like to explore more though… regards, Nix

There, on http://groups.yahoo. com/group/bombaymumbaibdsmclub, the snappily named website of an online community of 2,500 Indians, I had found thousands of messages like these.

They weren’t just from Mumbai, but all over India. Unfulfilled masochists looking for sadists, slaves looking for dominatrices, submissives looking for masters.

‘‘Submissive male looking for a dominant lady to serve,’’ was a typical one. ‘‘Any submissive ladies in Chandigarh?’’ was another.

They wanted to inflict or receive pain, humiliation, enslavement, bondage, submission, discipline—in fact, everything ‘normally’ thought of as, well, not terribly pleasant.

And some of them meet for dinner every month. They call them ‘‘munches’’. They even have a dedicated email address to write to if you want to go along.

So that was how I found myself at a table with 10 members of the Bombay/Mumbai Bondage, Discipline and Sadomasochism Club in Dadar that Friday night.

No leather, chains, spikes, piercings or tattoos for this bunch. At least, not in public. They were mostly middle-aged and dressed like they’d just come from the office. They were successful, educated, witty—and incredibly kinky.

I was the only person using my real name. Apart from Wytch—the only woman present—and Nocturne, they had names like Incubus, Honor, Hawk, Wolf and Phoenix. They were online identities, carried into the real world.

There was banter—mostly impenetrable in-jokes—some flirting with Wytch, lots of drinks and food, but no sex talk. Nobody discussed personal details, at least not in front of me. They had met online, on the B/M BDSM Club website, and had known each other for years.

Wytch, a chubby 30-something with long hair, was clearly in charge. She picked up a piece of chocolate cake and fed it to her slave sitting next to her, a young software engineer from Hyderabad, formerly known as Incubus.

The two had met on the Club website. He had been a submissive looking for a mistress, she a dominatrix looking for a slave. It was a match made in hell.

‘‘Now I come up from Hyderabad as often as I can,’’ he told me. ‘‘And I’ve changed my online name to Wytch’s Familiar.’’

Wytch was irritated at the slow progress of the new website the group was planning. It was an educational resource on ‘alternative sexualities’—a catch-all term for anything kinky—aimed at Indians. No porn, just information. Safe ways of enjoying sado-masochism, bondage techniques. They wanted to help others like them.

‘‘I’m getting sick of this,’’ she told them. ‘‘We meet month after month and nothing gets done.’’

She got some affectionate heckling. ‘‘You know who you remind me of?’’ said Wolf. ‘‘Shabana Azmi in Godmother.’’’

Naughty schoolboy laughs rippled around the table. Wytch quelled them with a withering look.

‘‘You need to spend a week at my house,’’ Wytch threatened him. ‘‘I’ll teach you some manners.’’

The rest of the conversation was dominated, as it were, by the new website. Would it be legal to host in India? Who would host it? Where would they source the content? How often should it be updated? To be honest, it was all rather ordinary and I found myself getting bored.

They carried themselves with a dignity and self-assurance that I hadn’t expected. Later, I thought I knew why that was. It was because they knew themselves better than most people. They had secrets. At some point in their lives they had looked unflinchingly into their souls and discovered something different—and embraced it. In a society where sexual repression is the norm, they are—like it or not—exceptional.