I was not in India when Tiwari’s filthy laundry got washed in public. But whatever filtered through sounded dreadfully gross. As more and more sordid details came tumbling out of that over crowded closet, I raised a cynical eyebrow and asked myself, “ So, what else is new?” Tiwari isn’t the first dirty old man in Indian politics to be caught with his dhoti down. And you bet he won’t be the last.There is something pretty nasty about power, politics and sex that leads to combustible situations of the nauseating kind. Not just in India, not just in the 21^st century, but as a wide spread phenomenon across the world since time immemorial. Some stupid men get caught. That is perhaps the only difference. What shocks society at large is not that these chaps have a grimey record of promiscuity and sexual exploitation, but the fact that they are still ‘doing it’ at that age! It is not so much a moral issue, as a medical one. An ‘ageist’ thing. Believe me, nobody would have been as scandalized had Tiwari been a man in his forties or fifties. What we find abhorrent is the senior citizen, grandpa status of the old goat. And since our hypocritical moral brigade is not accustomed to dealing with such issues ( I mean, compare India’s outrage to Tiwari’s masti to the seventy-plus Berloscuni’s brazen handling of his sexual adventures in Italy), everybody is huffing and puffing away while hanging on to each yucky detail

Most of the comments are based on the man’s advanced years. A lot of them ( mainly from far younger men) are tinged with envy - “ What does Tiwari eat for breakfast - Viagra?” There is an incredulous, almost jealous tone to those remarks. What that suggests is pretty obvious – howcome he is still getting it up and I am not?” Hardly anybody bothers about the women who have serviced Tiwari – what they feel about their bodies being used by a man old enough to be their Daadu. Sickened ? Or is it just a case of business as usual, and to hell with the fellow’s doddering years? Our revulsion has a lot to do with the fact that at a time of his life when Tiwari ought to be looking towards meeting his maker, he is actually thinking of making out with the neighbourhood wench. Indian society being as rigid as it is, men and women have their life spans cut up neatly into appropriate compartments. Tiwari’s delayed ‘vanvaas’ upsets us. We feel the man has no business to be indulging in carnal affairs when his mind, body and soul should belong to God. Our imposition of these arbitrary ‘laws’ is so peculiarly rigid, that we find it impossible to accommodate an older man’s libido. Come on….let’s be honest, women are revolted at the thought of sleeping with a vintage model. And men are way too jealous of his performance! Everybody hates Tiwari for not conforming to society’s set definitions and standards.Period.

Strange and annoying as it is, we have ourselves to blame. There will always be a neighbourhood Tiwari leching away at nubile girls. And there will always be a set of highly offended auntyjis and unclejis ready to condemn such a person. Rarely will we spare a thought for the man’s unwilling bed partners, or even his wife and family. It is as if they are nothing more than bit players who don’t really count. We choose to obsess over the ‘pervert’s’ sexapades instead and wish him a terrible, painful end for committing all those sins. We assume morally superior positions and debate endlessly on what a terrible example he is setting. We talk about the guy’s depravity and decadence. But the bottom line is slightly different. The unspoken emotion is one defined more by awe than shock. In an almost perverse way, there are those who may be secretly saying, “ That dude rocks…!” Horrible, but true. Deal with it.