Is going after eggs, cigarette papers and sex toys really worth the effort?

When there is a man-eating tiger on the prowl, does it make any sense to go after a street dog? Isn’t that barking up the wrong tree? A phrase that means “to mistake one’s object, or to pursue the wrong course to obtain it”. In Ahmedabad they’ve gone after eggs, in Hyderabad, after cigarette rolling paper, and in Bengaluru, sex toys.

Let’s begin with the ‘egregious’ ban on the humble harmless anda. Street vendors have been suffering under the ‘yolk’ of a supposed ‘anti-encroachment’ drive. On Thursday, while disposing of a petition by handcart owners, Justice Biren Vaishnav of the Gujarat High Court said, “How can you decide what I should eat outside my house? How can you stop people from eating what they want… Will the municipal commissioner decide what I eat? Tomorrow they will tell me not to drink sugarcane juice because it will cause diabetes. Or tell me that coffee is bad for health.”

Eggs

Full disclosure: I love eggs. I can’t have enough of them. I have to tell myself to stop after two, since the debate about the link between eggs and cholesterol is far from settled. One week they tell us to eat as many as one wants; the next, it’s back to three a week (after a certain age).

Everyone of a certain vintage remembers the ‘Sunday ho ya Monday/ Roz khao ande’ commercial jingle. Later on, Sachin Tendulkar appeared in a reboot of the ad. Eggs are good for you, that was the message from the grandly named National Eggs Coordination Committee.

On the other hand, eggs are taboo in certain parts of the country. Some communities will eat fish but not eggs or meat. ‘Pure veg’ can sometimes be like a Platonic ideal, which seldom holds true in real life. As PT Usha explains in her autobiography Golden Girl, she was a “poor eater”; it was the one thing that worried her coach, Nambiar, who encouraged the girls at the Cannanore Sports Division to eat eggs: “At home I was a pure vegetarian and ate only fish. Having been brought up on a strict vegetarian diet I just couldn’t get the meat dishes down my throat. I would not only skip all the non-vegetarian dishes but also hide the eggs in my glass and take them out. Many others like me threw away the eggs in the courtyard.”

This soon led to a problem. Taking a walk in the courtyard behind the hostel, Nambiar discovers that the place is littered with half-eaten and uneaten eggs. “Next day I lectured the girls on the benefits of eggs. They all nodded their heads in total approval. Soon, I forgot about it. However, I was to get a shock a few days later inspecting the girls’ rooms. In every room I discovered bags full of rotten eggs!”

I myself am half-Jain, from my mother’s side. My winter vacations were spent in the predominantly Gujarati/Jain suburb of Vile Parle (West) in Mumbai. The monks here wore face masks way before the coronavirus struck. There were no eggs in our kitchen. Each time I came back from town, my grandfather would nab me. “Did you eat non-veg?” Of course I’d had a chicken and egg sandwich at Wayside Inn. I’d always respond with a ‘no’. Bans, whether official or unofficial, only teach us to be tactful and still do what one wants, but on the sly. Years later, I’d tease my grandpa because he was taking Seven Seas, which he’d recently been prescribed by the family doctor. Looking back, it reminds me of the PT Usha principle: “Only fish, no eggs.” What’s called a ‘fishetarian’ nowadays.

With reference to Ahmedabad, one quote caught my eye. It was not about our right to eat as a civil liberty. A citizen had a non-religious complaint; he said, “But this is the only nightlife we had in the city. Even that has been snatched from us.”

Boiled eggs as nightlife. The pathos of this simple statement cannot be overemphasised. In an eggshell, sorry, nutshell: Ahmedabad can do with some discos selling mocktails. And lots and lots of eggs.

Rolling Papers

In October, the Cyberabad police booked 57 paan-shop/ kirana store owners for selling cigarette papers. As many as 16 teams fanned out, raiding 145 shops in total. This is supposed to weed out the weed/ ganja ‘menace’.

Cigarette papers, filters and roach books are one area in which India has made tremendous progress. Over the last few years, Indian manufacturers have dislodged smuggled Spanish brands. This is young ‘aatmanirbhar’ Bharat at its best. Back in the 1980s and 1990s the only paper available was Capstan. It was a shoddy product from the socialist era, with one in five papers not being gummed properly. The papers were also thick like greeting cards. Since then, Indian manufacturers have upped their game, slow-burning away the monopoly of foreign brands like Rizla, OCB and RAW. At kirana stores, college kids walk in and ask for desi brands, “Bhaiya, do Bongchie dena.” Bongchie is synonymous with papers — like Scotch tape and Sunmica were in their niche — no mean achievement for a home-grown brand. It’s the same confidence with which a previous generation learnt to walk up to the chemist’s counter and say with confidence, “Moods please.” It’s time we celebrated this new found confidence, rather than nip it in the bud.

In the 1980s an entire urban generation was ravaged by smack. There is no evidence of ganja causing comparable harm; the fact that rolling papers are easily available only points to the fact how acceptable recreational smoking has become. Like with eggs, let people make the choice. And if you have to go after drugs, go after drugs, but cigarette paper? Let’s not forget it’s also used by tobacco smokers who roll their own cigarettes. By this logic, why not go after the cigarette lighter as well?

Sex Toys

Meanwhile, earlier this month, a report from Karnataka. Sex toys, including dildos and dolls, have been piling up in the Bengaluru Customs godown. Apparently the demand hit a peak during the second lockdown. Horny happy people ordered them from websites abroad. They landed up at the Foreign Post Office where horny unhappy people confiscated them — the simple pleasures of life.

Our laws prohibit the import of toys that “resemble human body parts”. How somebody decides to pleasure themselves or their partners, in the consenting privacy of their bedroom, is really not the law’s business. In fact, it clashes directly with the Right to Privacy, now enshrined as a fundamental right.

The Chinese were the first to spot this gap in the virgin Indian market for sexual wellness. A decade ago, the pavements of Mumbai, especially around the Fountain area, were mushrooming with vibrators. Delhi’s Palika Bazaar, once the hub of smuggled two-in-one stereos, turned into a hub for life-sized dolls. Not for nothing is it called an ‘underground’ market. It’s earned the moniker. Again, these were signs of a changing society.

This September, Bloomberg published a survey, which says, “While China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India account for major usage of sexual wellness products in APAC, countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia are also expected to witness increased demand due to the improving quality of life and growing openness towards accepting sexual wellness products.” The fourth edition of the India Uncovered: Analysis of Sex Products’ Trends in India, commissioned by ThatsPersonal.com, an online wellness destination, showed a rise of 65 percent in the sale of sexual wellness products during the first lockdown. The writing on the bedroom wall is clear. I hope we don’t start targeting vegetable vendors next because some vegetables, let’s face it…

I have a simple solution to this tremendous waste of energy on the part of authorities and the unnecessary harassment meted out to both buyers and sellers. Laws take ages to change but a simple change in nomenclature might be more effective. We can begin by reclassifying eggs as ‘protein balls’, cigarette rolling paper and roach books as ‘notepad’, while sex toys can be slotted under ‘Lifestyle Enhancers’.

The writer is the author of ‘The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth’. The views expressed are personal.

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