Porn books still sought-after in Internet age

Even the resident of the Playboy Mansion has hung his legendary bunnies and realised that size does not matter; even a 10-inch screen can provide a discerning gentleman access to erotica.

 At a time when Hugh Hefner has got used to the fact that the digital revolution has not just democratised access to erotic adventures, it has provided an ease of access, Murshed Ali on central Kolkata’s Lenin Sarani continues to hold the pulse of a steady clientele.

The septuagenarian’s ware does not include scantily-clad women, rather books that boast no such proclivities. From his blink-and-miss stall on the busy thoroughfare in the heart of Kolkata, Murshed sells books covered in barely-thick yellow paper. And these books are no less of page-turners than the latest Lee Child novel for his regular readers. Murshed is among the last few sellers of Bengali erotica and pornographic literature.

Interestingly, the digital revolution and easy access to pornography and other erotic material online has by-passed him and his clientele. Not just that, Murshed will tell you how he continues to add a new customer almost every day, most of them aged between 23 and 45. “I understand these days people can watch porn films on their phone. Some people even read such books on their phone or computer. But holding a book in your hands is a different pleasure,” the 73-year-old man says.

Just like the owner of a respectable bookstore in Kolkata, who is fighting the onslaught of e-books and Kindle, Murshed believes there is no alternative to the physical book, even if it is less than 50 pages and the size of a tablet computer. The old man, who comes from a ghetto in the city’s western fringes, close to the docks, has been selling such books for years. “I don’t even remember for how long I’ve been selling these books. There are people who still look for such books,” he says, with a mischievous smile flashing a set of yellowing teeth, set against a dark, pock-marked face.

Rabin Karmakar (name changed), in his mid-40s, picked up a book from Murshed’s stall back in the early 1990s and comes even now to buy books. Despite a healthy marital life and having two children, he feels “addicted” to these books. Rabin works as the manager in a private bank with a plush office in Kolkata’s central business district. Throughout the day, he attends to customers from his air-conditioned cubicle, helping them to increase their wealth. His weekends are often spent “flipping through” pages of Bengali erotica.

“I keep these books away from my wife and our children. I’m an adult and I find nothing wrong in reading such books, unlike in my younger days when my parents would have chastised me and may be even punished me for reading ‘porn’. Yet, I wouldn’t want my 14-year-old son to lay his hands on any of these books. I’m also embarrassed to let my wife know about this,” he says in somewhat hushed tone, turning his head around occasionally to see if a familiar face has seen him picking up a book from Murshed’s stall.

What Rabin finds to be an “addiction” is an “academic interest” for Anjan Chakrabarti, who collects Bengali erotica and believes such books give a glimpse into an aspect of popular culture that has been marginalised by mainstream cinema, where “erotic elements are weaved in and passed off as entertainment”. An academic, Chakrabarti received his first book of Bengali pornography as a student from a friend and “got hooked” on to the “surprisingly crisp language” and “a different take on life”.

“These books provide a unique window into what people like to explore when it comes to sexual fantasies. I’ve been following such books for years and I’ve noticed a discernible change in use of vocabulary, including swear words, and themes, post-liberalisation in India,” says Chakrabarti, currently working on a thesis on “urban marginal population and nuances of erotic literature”. 

Adding credence to Chakrabarti’s study is a similar work and digitisation project, run by the School of Cultural Texts and Records under Jadavpur University, along with British Library. The purpose of the project is to archive Bengali street literature. 

Academics involved with the project point out that these books are mostly targeted at a “non-metropolitan readership, using traditional, obsolete technology, geared to a non-elite, virtually pre-industrial social phase”.

“These books coexist with elite publications but they are marketed via entirely different channels. Other than small book stalls in suburban areas, most sellers are street hawkers, who peddle such books on trains and public buses, and even at small fairs that are organised at the city’s fringes. These books have hardly been studied, never been archived, and have been completely ignored by formal literary and academic circles,” says Chakrabarti, who is building his own archive.

“These books not only reflect social and cultural life in the less ostentatious reaches of Bengali society but also illustrates interesting printing and marketing practices otherwise not found in elite publishing circles,” the academic points out. He explains that these books are commonly referred to as “holud molat” (literally, yellow cover; the Bengali street word for pornography) books because of the quintessential yellow covers they come with to keep prying eyes from the erotic photos on the actual cover underneath.

 “This idea most probably came with American GIs, who were deployed in Kolkata during WWII, who carried such books printed by Italian pulp fiction publishers of the 1930s and 1940s,” Chakrabarti says.

He points out that in Italy, subsequently taken to the US by such publishers, these books were known as “giallo”, the Italian word for yellow, owing to similar yellow covers on the Italian books.

Chakrabarti described how the market in Kolkata is largely dominated by three publishing houses, which mostly print such books-- Maya Prakashani, Sanjibani Prakashani and Padma Publishing House. While Maya and Padma are owned by the same person, Rabindra Sadhukhan, owners of Sanjibani, is difficult to trace. Sadhukhan, who refuses to give out details of his company’s financials, says that while he publishes books on folk culture, mythology, and religion, along with some academic guide books, the yellow-covered books rake in much of the moolah.

  “Most of our profits come from guide books but “holud molat” books are a close second. People buy and read them. We launch at least two new covers every few months and they sell like hot cakes,” Sadhukhan says. “These books are quite popular and some new publishers are entering the business because their sales figures are impressive,” he adds. But has online pornography been able to affect his business? Sadhukhan points out that not every such book is available online. “There are more books in stalls than are available online. And any book is like an asset,” he says.