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Sex and scandal in the world’s fastest growing mobile market
From Joanna Nathan
December 26, 2004
Modern technology is showing up “traditional” values in India as snatched shots
from mobile telephone cameras inspire heated debate, voyeuristic television
shows and three arrests.
First up was a tabloid newspaper’s front page centring on video footage of two
Bollywood stars apparently smooching in a fancy Bombay restaurant. There were
denials, threats of multi-million-rupee lawsuits and much hand wringing about
celebrity privacy as the short clip was shown on constant rotation on the
country’s news channels.
“I am not this kind of girl,” glamorous actress Kareena Kapoor, 23, was quoted
as saying. “I have an illustrious family name to uphold.” The Kapoor clan is
indeed an Indian acting dynasty along the line of the Redgraves.
But while kissing is slowly making its way into reel life – with Kareena’s
elder sister Karisma having locked lips in one of Bollywood’s very first
on-screen smooches – in real life it is apparently still too close for comfort.
Kareena insists that the faces of her and her boyfriend/ co-star Shahid Kapur
must have been “morphed” as they would never have jousted tongues so publicly.
Young director Karan Johar, known for his syrupy family Bollywood blockbusters
has condemned the broadcasts and publication of pictures on the grounds that it
could be damaging to children.
Attention to the filmstar couple’s public eatery antics subsidised only as
interest turned to a far more graphic phone camera clip.
Taken by a student of an elite Delhi school – whose name has been suppressed –
it showed his 16-year-old girlfriend performing oral sex on him and came to
public notice when it was put up for sale on the internet.
The screaming headlines roused the police to act, and the incident took on
international dimensions with the arrest of the American head of internet
auction site Baazee.com.
Avnish Bajaj was detained under anti-pornography laws despite the eBay-owned
company pulling the ad as soon as it was noticed.
The schoolboy who so unchivalrously filmed and shared the two-and-a-half-minute
clip was also detained along with Ravi Raj Singh, 23, a student of one of the
country’s most prestigious technical institutes who is accused of offering it
for sale.
American officials have waded in warning of “high-level” interest in the case,
while local industry tech body NASSCOM is left wringing its hands at the
“extreme” action which could frighten off foreign business.
The two clips were, of course. made possible by India’s rapidly growing
mobile-owning population – the fastest expanding market in the world.
There are no figures on how many of the handsets are camera enabled, but there
are a total of 45 million mobile telephones in India, far surpassing the
nation’s fixed line connections .
But while people may be happy to accept foreign technical innovations, the two
clips have led to concerns about less acceptable “cultural” imports. Western
movies and social mores are, it is feared, corrupting influences on the
nation’s youth.
One New Delhi newspaper ran screaming headlines of a survey of 200 pupils at
elite English medium schools finding that 10% had had sex with a schoolmate.
Not that they will reveal the pupils’ identities – few people are ready to
openly admit to sex outside of marriage even among the growing numbers of
scantily clad youngsters frequenting the burgeoning number of nightclubs.
The vast majority of marriages remain parent-arranged alliances with mixed sex
hand-holding – in or out of marriage – still largely seem as a social taboo.
The boy and girl at the centre of the lewd clip row have both been expelled
from school. In court, the prosecution claimed that the youth had shown “animal
instincts”. The magistrate, however, accepted the incident as a “misadventure”
rather than “moral depravation”.
The youth has now been allowed home on condition he receives a month’s
psychiatric counselling. And after several nights in the notorious Tihar
prison, Bajaj was released on bail earlier this week.
Calls are now being made for a light flash or sound to alert people to phone
camera use. Indeed, for the Bollywood community there is a lingering
realisation that secret citizen snappers mean they could be filmed wherever
they go.
The public, meanwhile, has lapped up the salacious details of the alleged
Kapoor-Kapur clinch in a country which has been largely devoid of a paparazzi,
flattering posed shots next to inane interviews being more the norm.
However, as the legal implications rumble on, a supreme court judge has
appeared to weigh in on the celebrities’ side, drawing attention to the alleged
Kapoor-Kapur kissing shots during a separate case about the country’s strict
defamation laws.
“That cannot be in the public good,” the bench noted.
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