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A!though they come from the land of Karna Surra, I ndians are n ow gammga repmariou at the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction A,,mrd for passages of pleasure gone wrong The award's .latest rec ipient, for the year 2013, is Mani! Suri, who took the gong, o r rather the climax, with his sub atom.ic bisexual orgy The City of Devi (Bloomsbury). Aniruddha Bahal's B11llker 13 cameio a [lmmber o ne.in 2003 , a n d there have been many, many other nominees includ.ing bigwigs Salman Ru shdie and J\ru nd hati Roy

For those not familiar with Literary Revieuls annual antiaward, it was establis h ed in l 993 by Rhoda Koenig and Aubero n \'v'augh and aims "to draw atte n tion co the c rud e, badly written, ofte n perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discomage it". Lad y D iana, P rincess of Wales even prese n ted tbe award one year.

Critically-acdairned writer, professor of mathematics at a US university, nominee on th e ]\fan Booker and even sho r tlisted for the Fa uJ.kner awards, Manil Suri is now also the w iru1er of a Bad Sex Award Suri's taboo- busting book The City of Devi, his third , i s an apoc aln)ti c thriller se t in Mumbai The famous, or .infamous, de pending o n how you look at it, sex scen e comes fro m an u n usual lo,,e rr.ia ngle in cl udi ng the n arrator Sarita , h er husband a nd a young gay Musli m man. Suri m anage d co woo me judges w ith the passage: S11rely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some gal.axy. The h11t vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands - only Karun's body, locked with mine, 1·emains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solAr systems, we dive through shoals ofq11arks and atomic nuclei In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rtjoice. How could rh.is sexual explosion through time, sp ace a nd co n sciousness, involving all of tl1e ch aracters of the book, n ot win?

Indian writings ofpleasurable things between the pages win Bad Sex Awards for all the wrong reasons

Suri was n ot present to accept the award for his super charged work. Instead, n ovelist Joan Colfa1s presented it to his p u blisher Bloomsbury, who accepted it o n his behalf in London. During the acceptance speec h the sex sce nes in the n ovel were described as "unfette r ed, quirky, beautiful, tragic and wildly experime n taJ".

Aniruddha Balla.l's 2003 es p ionage thriller B1111ker 13 (Faber & Faber), also went on to w in tl1e Literary Re11ie1v's Bad Sex Award for i ts take on. sex, drugs and corruption in th e Indian army.

A part of me winning section o f me novel is:

She picks 11p " Bugatti's 1110111e11tt1111.

Yott JI/{//// her 1J1ore t1t a Vo lkswagen's steatfy trot. Sq11eeze the lllileage out oj yo11rgallon of gas. But she's eating 11p the road with all rylif!dm h!t1zi11g

Cars and sex seem to b e a ,vinniog combination in Bahal's novel, even if it does make one wo n der w h at type of a Volkswagen h e wanted? Perhaps a slow and steady kombi va n ?

Babat even decided to publish a tongue -in- cheek piece on o u tloo kinindia com regarding h is expectation s on winning the pr.ize:

My soitrce also told me that he had it on good a11thority that the winner ofthe award some years back was trailed by five beautiful and luscious women to the hotelfrom the evening's venue and taught many things by them during the course ofthe night They might have taken pity on the w riter's sex writing and wanted to enrich his experience so that he could in future do full j11stice to the subject ofsex in his works

It was also suggested that siJ1ge r Sting, w h o presented Bahal the award, would catch up wim him late r w ith " fi ve cantric sex goddesses and a b u cket of grease". Surely such a night could not possibly be topped for a writer i n n eed of imp r oving their w ritte n. sex scenes, for in spi ration alone?

Th is comment raises an eyebrow at what the sex lives of these writers who w in tl1e Bad Sex Award are really like. Bairn! comically answers this by say ing in his p iece:

Some duffers have also started walking up to me these days and

Bunker 13

asking whether my real life sex was as interesting as nry writing. 17-Je women 1 have taken aside andjotted their phone numbers down to give them some detailed answers 1be men have had their nuts reconfigured.

A lthough Bahal happily accepted t he mvarcl as a " r ebellious ges nue" for bis saucy writing, du e to h.is belief that there is too m uch censorship o f writing in India, he was also a tad peeved , as, "lots of other wri ters in India moughc m y book had great sex writing".

Following on from Suri's credenti als , it seems that critical acclain1 of the writer is no guarantee chat me sex passages they write will be any good Amo ng noteworthy winners are John Updike, Hilary Mancel,Joh n Mortimer and Kingsley Amis. A nd keeping up me lnclian tradition, we have none otl1er than Salman Ru shdie in Shali1J1ar the Clown Qo n athan Cape) nominated in 2005: ln reply, Boonyi pulled her phiran and shirt offover her head and stood before him naked except for the little pot offire hanging low, below her belly, heating further what was already hot

"'Let's, you know, ca1·ess each other in five pl.aces and kiss in seven ways and make out in nine positions, but let's not get cmried away".

''Don't you treat me like a child, " she said in a throaty voice that proved ,-he had been unsparing in her dmg abuse

Sht1!i111ar the Clown was nominated for t he prize , despite winnin g the 2005 Vodafone Crossword Book Award and b eing a finalist at the 2005 Whitbread Boo k Awards.

Keeping Ru shdie company in the 2005 shortlist was Tarun Tejpal, currentl y in jail for sexuallr harassing a young journalist who worked at his magazine Tehelk11 T ej p al was nominated for his novel The Alche111y of De:ri,·e (Picador):

We began to climb peaks and foll offthem We did old things in new ways. And new things in old ways Any body part could be joined to any body part. And it would result in 11 masterpiece

A few years earlier, another of India's Booker Prize win n ers

Arundhaci Roy found herself nominated for her highly celebrated work The God of .lfllall Tbi11gs, for ideas such as "nucbrown breasts (th at would n't support a toochbrnsh)," alon g with "haunc hes (that could support a whole array of toothbrushes)". l remember blushing up a storm when I bad to read these passages ouc to my English lie class at uni. Wby oh why had I chosen those quotes for my speech?!

Other nominees have included Siddhant Dhanvanr Shangvi (2004) for his book The Lt,st Song of D11sk (Weidenfeld & N icolson); the Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam (also 2004) for Maps far Lost Lo1,ers (Faber & Faber); Hari Kunzru (2002) for The b11jmssionisl (Hamish Hamilton), and Nee l Mukherjee (2010) for A Life Apa,1 (Constable).

Certainly no one can say that w r iting a sex scene is an easy task, whid1 is why so many authors, Lldian or o therwise, shy away from writing one altogether, especially with the threat of winrung this award Indian or otherwise. Writing about sex in a non-crude, non -redundant way is one of d1e hardest things to do. How much information should the author give? Or not give?

As Sarah Crown in The GHardia11 writes, " Maybe it's me, but l find d1e concentration on phys ical sensation, a whole lot sexier than an y amount of thrusting, grabbing or grinding".

Sbe also notes that "as someone wbo works hard to get it right in my own novels, I'm very aware of just how difficult it is to depict well," and wanes to know where the good sex awards are? Perhaps writing from lndia, a country thar is foil of co n tradictions abour attitudes towards sex ha s even more of a c hallenge.

A survey conducred by Men's Health in 2013 found mat Indian men are the least sexuall y active among their counterparts. Noc only are Indian men having Jess sex, tbe education system refuses to even teach children about sex. Nirmalya Dutta on The Health Site asks, "Is our refosal to talk abour sex o r pretend it doesn't exist breeding potential predators who never realise that sex is meant to be an enjoyable experience between two consenting adults?" He concludes, "\Y/e keep on having to remind people about this but t he so-called Indian culture they keep on h:uping on about isn't even Indian, it's the remnant of 19th cenrury Victorian morality and there's noming Indian about it". Is it these attitudes chat are resulting in bad sex writing? Or maybe it's just a happy (ending) coi ncidence chat many of the win.oers and nominees are Indian writers?

And if you are wondering why Fif!Jr Shades of G,·ry bas yet to win d1e dubious honour of winning, d1e award is not for pornographic or expressly erotic Literamre. So mere goes an y mentions of the narrator's "inner goddess doing d1e lambada". Such a shame

From Roy's rood1hrushes, to Tejpal's peaks, Rushdie's awkward teenagers, Bahal's steady VW's and Suri's supernovas, Indian writers sure know how to impress tbe Bad Se,--c Award judges. Here's to me cmde, to the badly written, and co me redundam passages d1at lnclian authors have written, we salute you for giving it a red hot go in a tricky fie ld of crumpled bed sheets and underwear on the floor.

Who "vill win tbe 2014 title? And which lndian writer will find themselves on the s hore-list?

Tweet @indian link @Lit_ Review #BadSex what book you think should win this year's prize

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