By Chris Devonshire-Ellis

Oct. 13 – Following the success of our rather more serious (but none the less fascinating) look at China and India from the perspective of things you could get in one country but couldn’t get in the other, now it’s time to let our imagination relax a little and look at the more fun side of the cultural differences, with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Consequently, here are the 10 Naughty things we can find in India but cannot find in China. Unless of course, you’re going to tell us otherwise…

1. Cartoon Porn Stars
Savita Bhabhi is her name, and her, ahem – comic strip – was subtitled “the sexual adventures of a hot Indian bhabhi”. She was – is – India’s first porn comic cartoon; a fine mix of sex and tradition that’s managed to both tantalize and traumatize the country that gave birth to the Kama Sutra. The formula is simple (a voluptuous young woman who finds herself in compromising situations), but the social implications are slightly more complicated. Savita Bhabhi is an experimental mix of both old-fashioned values and modern concepts. The leading character is a married woman – particularly evident because of the part of her hair that is dyed deep red and her gold pendant (equivalent to a wedding ring). She also wears the traditional sari and the red dot between her eyebrows (the bindi). However, the success of her ahem – adventures – became rather too much and her web site was blocked by the Indian government after much moral outrage. But she’s on Facebook (unless you’re in China) and Wikipedia.

2. Sweets
Indians know how to have a sweet tooth, and love sweets. With recipes that usually involve a tin of condensed milk, three cups of sugar, ladles of desiccated coconut, a sprinkling of pistachios, and frosted with cardamom, it’s no wonder Indian weddings are such fun. They’re all on massive sugar highs.

3. Cricket Fights
Now you don’t get this in Ping Pong.

4. Driving 265 kilometers an Hour Over a Public Suspension Bridge
Just last Sunday, in a Formula One teaser, David Coulthard was to drive his F1 Red Bull across the newly opened Bandra-Worli Sealink Bridge in Mumbai. Promising to only do 160 kph along the bridge due to safety concerns, and sent off by the local Police Chief Mr. D. Sivanandan who dropped the starting flag, Sivanandan said he was “flabbergasted” when Coulthard instead ramped the vehicle up to a maximum 265 kilometers per hour, crossed the entire bridge length in just 60 seconds and then proceeded to do “doughnuts” to the astonished crowd waiting for him. Then he turned round and did it all the way back again. Sivanadan subsequently issued him with a speeding ticket and refused to return Red Bull’s US$30,000 safety insurance deposit that was lodged with the event organizers.

5. Elephant Rampages
This never happened at the Jing An Temple on Nanjing Xi Lu.

6. Wet Saris
Indian saris have got to be the sexiest dress ever invented. Almost completely covering the body, yet leaving occasional tiny flashes of midriff. However, India is still quite conservative in many ways – after all, there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan. Female nudity is a no-no. But in Bollywood, when naughty directors want to give the impression of nakedness, the “wet sari” trick is used. And when used as a Bollywood dance scene, the effect looks like this. It is for this reason that it rains rather a lot in Indian films.

7. Hash Smoking
The Sadhus are India’s Holy men, and they wander all over the country on a never ending search for enlightenment. Having renounced all worldly belongings, they survive on handouts. About 4 million of them exist at any one time, and almost all are followers of Shiva, the God of Destruction. Smoking Hash is also part of their religion, and woe betide any over-jealous cop who wants to bust them. No Hindu policeman wants to be on Shiva’s shit list. Mythologically, Hash is intimately connected with Shiva: he smokes it, he is perpetually intoxicated by it, he is “The Lord of Hash.” Or as one young sadhu less eloquently put it, “Shiva is a cooool god!” So there they go, free to wander at will, all over India and beyond, constantly stoned. The short film, City of Sadhu’s, is here.

8. Elephant Polo
Not so much naughty as just seriously cool. And it shows another side of the magnificent elephant. The current world Champions, somewhat implausibly, are Scotland. The World Elephant Polo Association web site is here.

9. The Longest Beard in the World
Not naughty (unless you’re an unemployed barber), or cool, but definitely weird. Chinese men generally struggle to produce a faint shadow of a moustache. Not so the far more hirsute Indians. The current holder of the World Record for the Longest Beard In The World is a Mr. Sarwan Singh. It measures 2.36 meters long, and a photo of both it, Mr. Singh attached, and lots more on hairy Indians can be found on the wonderfully named SikhiWiki.

10. The Kama Sutra
It’s impossible to leave out the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by the Indian scholar Mallanāga Vātsyāyana. Written around the second century, it contains a great deal of instructional material about what is probably humankind’s favorite occupation. And with populations well in excess of a billion each, its teachings have not gone unnoticed by either the Indians or the Chinese. However, the Indians wrote it.

Over time, contents of the Kama Sutra, and especially the sexual union parts, have been painted in miniatures now for centuries, as well as carved into stone, wood and marble figures and exist in temples and buildings all over India and beyond. A typical example of a miniature is this image, believed to date from the 19th century.

Next Week: The Ten Naughty Things You Can Get In China You Can’t Get In India

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