Sex and the Country

In the last few months, there has been a host of sex scandals involving godmen, a governor and a retired police commissioner. While media is having a field day, so are the readers who do not have to look at International News columns for that juicy tidbit when you have juicier stories as headlines almost every other day.

Just as YouTube was recovering from the hits on Tiwari’s twosome video, Nityananda’s “love” video involving an actress was posted. News channels aired some parts of the video throughout the day calling it breaking news (most of the viewers had no clue as to who Nityananda was) and even put together a panel of nobodies to debate about his action. The Tamil news channel, Sun TV, which first aired the sensational video with the face of the actress blurred, took it a step further by creating a whodunit mystery asking its viewers to stay glued to the news the next day as they were going to reveal the identity of the actress.

While the news channels sympathized with the actress who claimed to be one among the several inmates that the swamiji sexploited, the swamiji did a disappearing act while betrayed devotees were asked to evacuate the ashram premises as others who had nothing to do with the whole affair continued to trash everything that was in sight and set fire to the property.

In this whole affair, who is the victim and who is the culprit?

There is no one answer to who the culprit is but there definitely is no victim.

Culprit #1: Swami Nityananda: This self-professed sanyasi with his mellifluous voice found it hard to abandon desire amid actresses who sought him desperately to find solace and which they did find!

Culprit #2: The actress Ranjita: The lady who has confessed to setting up the camera and capturing the action is no babe in the woods. Sleeping around is something that comes as naturally to them as acting. When the swami refused to marry her (especially after she learned of his current assets which is roughly estimated as 300 crores), she felt betrayed and decided to turn him in.

Culprit #3: Media: While the media’s job is to report news, the vulgarity involved in sensationalizing the whole affair was nothing less than gutter press. They aired the video throughout the day not caring if it was watched by a 80-year-old or an 8-year-old.

Culprit#4: We: We are the main culprits for we not only elevated a mere mortal to a godman status and then claimed to have felt betrayed and let down by him but we were equally culpable as voyeurs and vandals.

This reminds me of a scene in Dev D. where Chanda’s father confronts her after watching her sex MMS and reprimands her while a guileless Chanda retorts by asking him what kind of a father was he to have watched something like that which involved his own daughter. She walks out of the room while the father retires into his bedroom and shoots himself ashamed and guilty of his action.

So are we not the main culprits?