Erotic Mood

The gigolo I meet isn’t six feet tall, and isn’t well-groomed. In a half-empty cafe in south Delhi, the man looks a bit awkward. He is short, stout, and dark. Sophistication is not this man’s strong suit, but he is upfront and ambitious. He watches blue films everyday to master sexual positions, and other intricacies of pleasing women if they were to choose him. But the need here isn’t for money per se. This raging libido, he says, he can’t control.

​

He is also frustrated with the way things have failed to work out for him in this career of choice. “I think I am not good looking,” he says, “But I don’t even the have the money to groom myself. I am raw.” He scanned newspapers for massage parlour classifieds, and called them, but they didn’t want him.

Once, a woman had called him from Nagpur, asked him to send her photos of his organ, and then enquired about the size. She said she would be in Delhi soon, and would try him out. A few days later, she called, but only to ask if he would recharge her phone connection. He hung up.

​

“It is not easy to make it in this profession,” says the man, apparently unmindful of others in the café, “I don’t want to be the upscale guy who entertains and gives a ‘boyfriend experience’ to women who are elitist and wealthy. I just want the housewives of this city. The ones who live in middle-class colonies, and aren’t delusional to look for company. They are women who just want sex, and they want it raw.”

​

He is aware of the odds stacked against someone who is dark, and isn’t fluent in English, and lives in a one-room tenement after having walked out of his family home in Jamia Nagar in Delhi. He says he doesn’t have a girlfriend, and the prospect of money along with sex is something he saw as a good career choice.

​

His house is bare except for a little bed and a table. He does odd jobs to get by, and sometimes at night, he stands near restaurants and pubs at the New Friends Colony market hoping to be picked up by flashing a red handkerchief. This used to be the calling card in old days. It still works. But nobody has ever picked him up. He isn’t expensive, he says. Depending on the time to be devoted, he offers himself for anything between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000. A few of his friends got lucky, and he waits for his chance. Meanwhile, he is preparing himself by watching videos, and reading sex stories online.

​

There is no question of morality here. There’s ambition, and there’s desire.

The man stirs his coffee, and looks around. “You know, Delhi is full of desire. Underneath its middle-class sheen, there is a lot,” he says. There is sex on sale in the parks, and sex in the hostels, if you have the money for it.

Right in the middle of the coffee shop, he insists on showing me a few clips on his phone. He also says he is willing to offer his services free for the sake of the story.

 

​