Nothing illustrates our hypocrisy as a society as dramatically as porn. We condemn it and consume it, both profusely. Ostensibly, we despise it; eagerly, we pay for it and watch it. Porn or pornographic films are a huge industry, now reaching $100 billion according to NBC. It is also a flourishing trade, growing at an incredible pace every year. PH Analytics estimates 5 billion hours of porn are watched every year, especially by young people including teenage women. We know its massive, burgeoning presence on the US west coast, but it is also spurting in India, Thailand and a dozen other countries.
 
Porn is spreading fast, simply because we are patronizing it. Horrendous as the thought is, our adored parents saw it; we are doubtless seeing it more; in turn, our children are seeing it in ever-increasing numbers. Every hotel or motel room, from New York to New Delhi, Dhaka to Dakar, Kathmandu to Kiev, has, if nothing else, a television set, and it has, along with multiple channels, access to porn shows and and porn channels. Those are the channels, hotel statistics tell us, most heavily used. Middle-aged executives, aging politicians, respectable businessmen, revered gurus, itinerant scholars, roving journalists, young cyberwiz, all seek a respite from their chores by watching hulking men bring eager women to moaning orgasm. Far from their docile wives and complaisant secretaries, they savor the safe excitement of seeing lively women and ever-ready men in enthusiastic congress, writhing and sweating as they explore new ways of coupling.

May the aged and jaded have their short-lived thrill before they fall off to half-sodden sleep, but the young are now, all accounts show, getting their first lessons in sex from porn. Very few societies have a decent way of telling young people about an important part of life, the part they most want to know about. All they usually get is some pompous talk about venereal diseases, HIV and AIDS, and the need for abstinence, plus a dose of spiritual hocus pocus about divine purpose or yogic transcendence. What they most want to know about, the joy of close intimacy, the magic of physical relationship that could be most useful for their adult life, they absorb zero. They gain little and learn nothing either about our bodies and what pleasure they can yield.
 
So it is that porn has become our most important instructor of young people about physical relationship. Given the ubiquity of mobile phones and easy access to internet, young people are getting their first idea of their bodies from porn. They are learning what they most want to learn: how one can have fun with their bodies and enjoy themselves. Porn has, in effect, become the principal educator of young people about sex.
 
Shocking as it may sound to many, experts say it is a good thing that people learn a few rudiments about their bodies. Most men, even educated ones, have a scant notion of how women’s private parts look like; women have, unless they have grown up with immodest brothers, have no idea how men are equipped. Their mutual physical encounters, as they occur more and earlier, are based on appalling ignorance. They have only the faintest idea about how to offer some pleasure to the other person. An act of sex is more likely to be an inept affair, a guaranteed disaster, than a source of lasting joy. It can play serious havoc with relationships instead of adding to the joy and strength of a relationship. When porn makes a dent in that universe of ignorance, it makes possible a sliver of understanding.

​But that enlightenment comes with a price. Much of porn, as Nabokov once said, is insufferably dull. A sequence of repetitive coition hardly makes for rapt viewing. Worse, when love-making is represented by default as a physical effort, almost a gymnastic exercise, performed always by supple, athletic bodies, over an impressive interval, it begins to misrepresent the central message. When caring for each other takes a back seat, a loving deed gets converted into an insipid mechanical gesture. Though it is beginning to change, some porn has a noticeable male bias, showing the woman as an object of desire, hunted rather than courted by multiple men, rather than as an equal erotic protagonist.
 
The net result is that young people who get their erotic exposure increasingly from easily accessible porn tend to develop a lopsided view of the affair. Men expect oral sex from female partners, irrespective of their preference; women expect Olympic performance with multiple climaxes from their male partners. The key ingredient of mutual play and growing partnership goes out of the window.
 
I was talking to Dwight, a professor in a local university, who is working on the idea of a course that would use porn materials to explore erotic assumptions of young students and help them sort out the wheat from the chaff: recognize what is real and worthwhile, namely a caring relationship and the mutuality it demands, and separate it from what is not, namely the athletic prowess of the participants. It would help the students come to grips with the love, in some form or other, that has to be at the very core of love making. Some universities apparently already have coursework that includes porn awareness.
 
There is utter hypocrisy in declaiming porn to be garbage and surreptitiously viewing it, enraptured, at every suitable opportunity. If we think about why it draws so much attention, it may one day get better and serve some good purpose.

It is always easier to say Yes than to say No.
 
We are told as children that it is polite to be pleasant and say Yes. Even if we aren’t told, we find quickly that it is much more rewarding to smile and say Yes. Other people want us to agree, comply or fall in line. Perhaps they like being told, in effect, that they are right. They love to hear others echo their point of view. Even if they are smart and guess you don’t wholeheartedly agree with them, they still like your endorsement. Your stock goes higher. They just want to hear that Yes.
 
We also find that many think that to disagree is to be disagreeable. You may give very good reasons when you say No, but it rarely helps. Your friends, colleagues and acquaintances think you dim-witted or pig-headed. If you are unlucky, they also think you perverse. Your No seems to them a badge of dogged unreasonableness.

If you have just joined a new organization or moved into a new apartment, your best bet for developing good colleagues or good neighbors is to be ‘agreeable.’ The very word tells you what that entails. You better display some agreement with their views, social or political. If they are leftist, either make some leftist noises or stay quiet about your conservative, rightist ideas. If their idea of a pleasant evening includes three very dry martinis, they expect you to express your partiality for gin; at least, to withhold your intemperate zeal for temperance. Yes is the key to future bonhomie.
 
Yet, a Yes is not without its price. The biggest problem is that, once you say Yes, it is hard to switch later to a No. Once you agree to babysit somebody’s kid, you will be called upon to babysit on all future occasions, whether there is a real emergency or they just want to see the next Batman movie. Once you nod sagely as your boss talks ecstatically about free trade, you will spoil your relationship if you ever make the slightest protectionist noise. Nobody is interested in the subtlety of your reasoning. The slightest suspicion that you are about to change your tune will bring down on your head the wrath of the spurned.
 
You might as well cry in the desert than expect your friends to remember Emerson’s dictum about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds. Nobody cares how much you have studied of late, how your views have evolved, you will be scorned as a turncoat with no sense of loyalty or a weather-cock with no inkling of ideology. You may have genuinely come across new facts or parsed your way to different ideas, but your switch from Yes to No will attract the worst of interpretations.

Women tell me that these hiccups are nothing compared to what they have to endure. They are brought up to be well-mannered, pleasant at all cost, obliging to a fault. They quickly find that their effort to be considerate and cooperative often trigger two kinds of reactions. They are taken to be patsies or pushovers, whose compliance can be taken for granted and used. Hence a woman who agrees to have a walk or a cup of coffee with you is assumed by some as open to further overtures. A gesture to discourage is then construed as specious and coy rather than reflect a genuine displeasure. The overtures continue and may become more overt.
 
The other reaction is to equate pleasantness with gullibility. A woman, I am told, who tries to be sunny and gracious with a car mechanic is liable to be seen as a ‘softie’ and a prime target for overbilling. A new female entrant to an office dominated by males, who tries to be friendly and helpful, may quickly find herself loaded with unwelcome chores and taken advantage of in less savory ways. If she then tries to change her ways and act less obliging, a virulent response is to characterize her as stiff and standoffish. Even other female employees may offer unkind evaluations of the new person as too coquettish or too haughty.

​People do change in time, in their notions and in their behavior. They certainly have the right to do so. That is the very meaning of growing or maturing. Then things or ideas or practices we have cherished, perhaps for years, may cease to be pleasing to us. We must then say No to things to which we have said Yes earlier. It may be a club, a sport, a relationship, or something as trivial as a film, a dance or a cigar. It may cause minor discomfort, an awkward sense of disloyalty, but we need to go forward. If we keep saying Yes to please others, then we are living a life shaped by others, not by ourselves.
 
The first condition for being able to say Yes to something I believe worthwhile is to be able to say No to something I no longer care for.

​Kevin Judd was a Canadian Baptist missionary who tried to bring the Lord’s word to British India in the late thirties. He lived with his wife in a modest home on the outskirts of Delhi. Their son, Jeremy, went to a boarding school in the hill station, Nainital, where he played wore gray flannel, played soccer and learned etiquette.
 
Later he studied Economics in Wharton, taught in the Georgetown University and settled down in the Washington area. For the last twelve years he has been my neighbor and friend. I enjoy parties at his home, for he never lost touch with South Asia and I always encounter interesting people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka at those events.
 
Last month, I was hovering near the bar when Jeremy asked what I thought of the new leadership in Bengal, the part of India I know best. I briefly recounted my recent visit to Kolkata. A minute later a tall woman turned to me and asked, “Did I hear you talking about Kolkata?”

When I nodded, she said, “I lived ten years in that town.” Though she sounded American, I noted a muted British accent.
 
“Really? Where in Kolkata?” I asked.
 
“I lived on Amherst Street,” she replied. It was a narrow north-south street in central Kolkata, named after William Pitt Amherst, First Earl, Governor General of India who followed the notorious Lord Hastings.
 
“That street has now been renamed Rammohan Roy Sarani,” I said. “But, tell me, could you have been living at 33/1 Amherst Street?”
 
Her mouth fell open. “Good Heavens! How did you guess that?”

“It was an easy guess,” I said, “A number of British missionary families lived in the large apartment house at that address. My parents knew several of them. Right opposite, on the same street, was the Saint Paul’s School, which I attended for years.”
 
“Amazing coincidence!” she commented, then went on to add that she had recently moved from Boston after her widowhood.
 
I asked what her last name was before she married.
 
“Bridgewell,” she said.
 
I took a good look at her and then said, “Well, I am sorry that you did not recognize me, Jennifer.”
 
It was indeed an astonishing coincidence. Fortyfive years earlier, when I was nine and Jennifer was seven, we were thrown together quite a lot as our parents partied and we had to devise our own games to amuse ourselves. Jennifer was a shy girl with curly hair, who had to be cajoled to join any game I suggested.
 
Jennifer was speechless for a while.
 
Then we reminisced and talked about the people we had both known. I poured some wine for us both and we talked for a long while.

​I could not, however, tell her the real reason I so well remembered the last name, Bridgewell.
 
My father was very friendly with a missionary couple, John and Bridget Wells. John was a chemistry professor, and Bridget was an accomplished pianist. Father had instructed me to call them Uncle John and Aunt Bridget. What he didn’t know was that I was madly in love with Bridget. Her short red hair and tilted nose simply took my breath away. Of course, I gave no hint of my passion to anybody, certainly not to Bridget, though my little heart melted any time she cast me a glance.
 
You can imagine my disgust when Jennifer’s dad, Sam Bridgewell, started smiling like a hyena while he danced close with Bridget in a birthday party. Then I saw him – my diminutive height gave me an advantageous point of view – lower a hand and surreptitiously pinch Bridget’s bottom. That did it! I could not imagine anybody daring to do something so despicable to somebody I believed to be an angel. Sam Bridgewell instantly became my lifelong adversary and the worst cad on earth.
 
No, I could not possibly tell Jennifer how loathsome I thought her dad was, but I certainly could never forgive Sam Bridgewell or forget his hateful name.

​Of my friends, the one I most strenuously avoided was Henry.
 
We had worked together and I found him ingenious and smart. He was also witty and likable. I enjoyed my time with him. I would go out of my way to invite him when I went for lunch.
 
Then it changed, ever so slightly. The first indication was the quality of his work. There were slight delays and minor slip-ups. Then, bit by bit, appeared more serious problems. Some of his work turned up unaccountably shoddy. How could a clever, well-informed man come up with such poor work?  
 
Maybe because I liked him it took me so long to guess the reason. I kept covering for him. Frequently I edited and rearranged his work. Lately I was rewriting large parts of his reports. Yet the truth eluded me.
 
Finally, it became as clear as daylight. He was an addict. He had been on drugs for a while. Now he was in a state of utter dependence. He lost his job. I was severely reprimanded for trying to cover for him. I was told that I hadn’t helped him by enabling him to conceal his dependence. I had in effect permitted him to indulge his addiction for a while longer.
 
He was well paid, but he had used up all his savings. In fact, he had borrowed from several of his colleagues. Curiously, he had never tried to borrow from me.
 
The day he left I could barely bring myself to look at his face. He was leaving in utter disgrace. I doubted he would ever find another professional job. He was a qualified, capable man. But his dismal record in a major organization would make it impossible for him to find another decent job. I felt heart-sick for him.
 
He dropped out of my world. But I could not forget him. I remembered what a talented man he was. I did not know how he had acquired his addiction, but that was not the only aspect of the man. He was an intelligent, industrious man with a scholarly bent. His addiction had twisted his life and his capabilities. In my eyes he was still a worthy man. I simply did not know how to help him or wean him from his addiction.
 
I heard later that Henry had fallen on hard days. Apparently, he tried to borrow more from people he knew. I never tried to get in touch with him, for I feared he would ask for a loan. I knew I would find it hard both to refuse him a loan or to give him money that was certain to be misused. I did not want to have anything to do with him.
 
I left the organization years later and took a job that took me overseas for long periods. Years later I was back in Washington and went to see a throat specialist with a minor complaint. He sent me to the hospital next door for a strep test. I wasn’t sure where the lab was and asked the bearded man who sat at a corner, helping incoming visitors. The man directed me to the room and, then, as I turned to go, softly said, “Manish!”
 
I turned sharply and, despite his unkempt beard and longer hair, recognized Henry after a minute. I looked at his worn, creased face, but saw the friend I had once liked so much. I hugged him and briefly told him where I lived and what I did. I told him to wait a while and went and completed my strep test. Then we walked together to the hospital cafeteria.

​Henry explained that he did part-time work in the hospital, essentially helping patients find the right department and trying to improve the hospital’s image as a friendly place. He lived nearby in the basement of a friend’s tiny apartment and periodically visited his divorced wife and his daughter in another town. As I had guessed, he had never found another decent job and had barely survived with part-time work.
 
Henry had clearly fallen about as low as one could fall. As we drank coffee, the unspoken question that hung in the air was how did it all happen. I could not bring myself to ask, but Henry must have known that my affection would prompt that curiosity.
 
“I lived a charmed life. I had a good job, a comfortable home, a devoted wife. I had a five year old who went to the nursery next door. One evening I returned from work and my wife told me that the child seemed to have a respiratory problem. I rushed to the emergency and, half an hour later, my life seemed to be over. The child was gone. My wife said we would have a child again. We quickly had a daughter. I don’t know what happened, but I just never got reconciled to the loss of my son.”
 
Henry paused, then resumed, “At some point I tried some coke. A friend thought it could give me some relief. It seemed so for the moment. But I needed more and more. You tried to help me at work. Nothing could help me. I think I was beyond help. It took another five years before I could finally kick the habit. My wife left me. All my friends left me. It took me three more years to return to normal life.”
 
I watched the lines on Henry’s forehead. He was about the same age as me, but he looked much older now. It hurt me to recall the pains I took to avoid him. I could have done more to help him. At least to understand him.
 
Now all I could do was to extend my hand and gently touch his wrist. Henry sipped his coffee and smiled back. As if to say he forgave me.