No place for sex? Get one for Rs 10- The Economic Times

No place for sex? Get one for Rs 10- The Economic Times

No place for sex? Get one for Rs 10

INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, AUGUST 05, 2005 01:37:11 AM]

For Naren Aggarwal and Swati Sengupta it has become nearly a daily ritual. These 20-something lovebirds pay a few rupees to find privacy in a cyber cafe cubicle in Delhi’s Ber Sarai. It’s not that the owner Ravi Kaushik doesn’t know why these two frequent his cafe so regularly.

Or, take the instance of Anupam Sharma and Alok Gogoi. These two college–going boys bring their girlfriends to cyber cafes whenever they can bunk classes. And like them do some thousands of youth across the country. It’s not just the country’s capital that discourages young people, in love, from spending time together. The Agra cyber cafe incident had sent shock waves across the country.

Late last year police raided a couple of cyber cafes in the city and found school children glued to porn sites. The raid was conducted in the full glare of television cameras. What people thought was a malaise that afflicted only the metros and the upper crust was found to have filtered even to smaller cities and lower middle class.

For today’s youth making out in cyber cafes or surfing for pornography has become the sole reason for going online. And for cafe owners it has meant more business. “I started this cyber cafe in 2000 and initially only technical students and professionals used to visit. But gradually things changed and now 95 per cent of my customers come here only to chat on messenger and surf porn sites,” says Rajeev Bansal, owner of a cyber cafe in south Delhi.

Though cyber cafe owners have seen their margins plummet over the years, they still make a decent Rs 25,000 at a minimum as profit. And a major chunk of this profit is powered by the hunger for sex, either real or virtual.
“If someone is having sex inside the cubicle, how does that harm me? In fact, this non-interference has earned me more customers,” avers Kaushik.

The couples have a point though. Our society is not known to honour the privacy of couples stealing a few moments together. Neither are there public places where couples can hang out without being harassed by local goons or the keepers of law.

“See love needs physical gratification also. In Delhi, a place for love making is a kind of luxury. The only place that affords any privacy are friends’ places or hotels. However, hotels are not safe and cost effective and you cannot always trouble a friend. These cafes offer privacy and they are the cheapest possible option,” says Aggarwal.

Pornography has been there since time immemorial. But what is troubling conscience keepers is its easy availability. The figures are mind-boggling. There are over 4 mn websites that offer pornography. That is 12 per cent of the total sites in the www domain. Daily request for porn touch 68 mn globally and the online porn industry is worth $57 bn.

A recent Times of India report mentioned that in India the porn industry is likely to touch $1 bn. In Delhi’s Palika Bazaar alone there are 1,000 buyers of pornographic material and daily revenue from sales are anywhere between Rs 60,000 and Rs 1 lakh.
The country’s cyber cafes are also notorious for the lewd graffiti that are scrawled. Sample these: “Contact 981....... for one night stand. Secrecy assured.” Or, “Lonely housewives, divorcees and widows, email to.... for complete sexual satisfaction. Accommodation no problem.”

“I initially tried to stop this, but I cannot keep a constant eye on my customers. And believe me most of these nonsense are written (or painted) by educated people. Now, I have stopped worrying about it,” says Rajesh Singh, a cafe owner.

There are some cafe owners like Laxman Pawar who have banned porn surfing in his café. He has put up notices that say, “Please do not expose your perversion by browsing porn sites. We would be forced to throw you out of the cafe.”

He goes on to say, “I had to do away with close door cubicles because of these perverts. Surfing has become very cheap these days. I charge Rs 10 per hour. And to my horror I discovered many couples came here only to make love inside the cubicles. I have caught many of them red handed.”

But as Swati Sengupta so innocently asks, “How does it matter to others what we do inside closed doors?”

Now, this is a million-dollar question: Does it really matter to anyone?

It really matters to law. “A cyber cafe is of course a public place and Indian law does not allow sex in public places. Do I need to say more,” says Deependra Pathak, DCP, south-west Delhi.