Inside the Cult of Kink

IT IS ALMOST 8PM in the antechamber of a nightclub, and a group of women are quizzing a man on consent. “Tell me two rules about consent,” they ask, referring to a set of guidelines we have all been asked to memorise. “Or we won’t be letting you in.”

Leaving behind the man fumbling for answers, I push myself through a heavy door. Inside, as the eyes adjust to the darkness, appear individuals dressed in over-the-top clothes and masks like characters out of the orgy scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, but also those, wearing simple shirts and pants, who could be the kind of friendly middle-aged colleagues you encounter at work. Amidst these people, Akshay Jha stands out. Built muscularly, he is dressed in what looks like a short leather apron and a tiny netted vest, and very little else. Exchanging pleasantries, an older guest cannot help but remark, “I could never pull this off, even with a physique like yours.”

To which Jha, not looking particularly amused, responds, “It’s not about the body. You need to be confident.”

Confidence however doesn’t seem in equal supply at this BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) event, at least not at this early hour. Near us, a small group of what appear to be first-timers to such a party has materi­alised around a table bearing BDSM toys. Visibly excited, although shy, they point to and poke at the whips and spanking paddles, giggle about the handcuffs, ball gags and collars, until a woman, who appears to be a regular, nonchalantly picks up a whip and sends a sharp crackling sound through the air. The first-timers watch intently, a shiver of excitement running down their faces.

We are at a small nightclub towards the end of last year, rent­ed out for this by-invite-only BDSM or kink event, in a Mumbai suburb. Titled Worship, it is an event meant for—in the words of the organisers—“worshipers” and “divinities”, alternative words really for people who subscribe to the submissive and dominant sexual dynamics within BDSM circles. It is, in the description of the organisers, a play event. So after a few sessions to familiarise the participants with the event’s rules, in­cluding those on safety and consent, the night is thrown open for play. The ‘divini­ties’ write down their desires on little chits of paper, and the ‘worshipers’ then perform the selected desires upon the worshipper.

Over the next few hours, a feverish ex­citement takes hold, and the room breaks out to the occasional sound of yelps and moans. Nothing outrageous takes place— there are rules against nudity and obscen­ity—but some boundaries do get pushed. There are plenty of head and shoulder massages, the sucking of toes and feet, bending over and spankings, humilia­tions heaped as faces get smothered by feet and hair pulled, and every few minutes, the air resounds to the sharp crack of a whip. It usually turns out to be the domm (the shortened term for “dominatrix” or a woman playing the dominant role in sex­ual encounters) in the room, who dressed in a leather corset and fishnet stockings and very little else, is frequently sought out for those who desire a whipping.

“You know it [kink events] gets much wilder abroad.” Aili Seghetti, the founder of The Intimacy Curator which has or­ganised this event, is telling me. Seghetti, who identifies herself as a kinkster, moved from the UK to India several years ago and started The Intimacy Curator, a rela­tionship and intimacy coaching service, which also often hosts kink events. “But it is slowly getting there,” she continues, as beside us, a bespectacled middle-aged man who I had noticed massaging a foot a few minutes back, now seems to be gorging on an entire toe.

BDSM may be stigmatised and viewed as a sexually deviant practice in India like it is in some other countries, but India has always had a thriving underground BDSM scene. You needed to know someone to know someone to gain entry into kink parties in farmhouses, or you needed to scour the pre-social media internet to land up on chat rooms where a kinkster may connect with another. But in recent years, this underground scene has begun to open up more. There are groups such as The Intimacy Curator which organise kink-only events; city-specific groups that oper­ate out of Telegram and meet each other during munches (casual meetups of those interested in kink); multi-day conventions around kink called Kink Cons, organised by the group Kinky Collective which is also currently hosting a film festival around BDSM; apart from the explosion online in the use, by Indians, of dedicated social net­working platforms for the BDSM-inclined like FetLife. No kink is too freaky. No desire, however outre, beyond satiation.

“We are becoming super mainstream now,” Jha, who also serves as the creative head at The Intimacy Curator, says later over the phone. “And I’ve seen it all. From super shady kink parties in farmhouses to the scene right now, where it is much more open and safe.”

THERE ARE MULTIPLE reasons why such an opening up of this subculture is happening in India. Apart from the explosion of kink spaces on the internet, through which people from the community meet and interact with one another, there has also been a reshap­ing of conversations around sexuality in some quarters of social media where taboos are being busted and sex-positivity being championed. The arrival of kink-oriented and kink-friendly businesses that provide kink education, organise events, or sell sex toys has also helped.

“Till some years ago, we had to make do with whatever we could get our hands on,” says a Mumbai-based woman who goes by the name Miz Mojo in kink circles. “We had to use horse-riding whips to flog and spatulas to spank, because that was the only thing available,” she adds with a laugh. “Now, you get all sorts of things, even different types of ropes to tie another with.”

Miz Mojo, who identifies herself as poly­amorous (the practice of engaging in sexual and romantic relationships with multiple people) and a dominant (although she says she can also be a submissive, but only to someone she cares for), first got intro­duced to kink through a boyfriend, when she was living abroad, back in 2017. She stopped practising the kink aspect of her lifestyle, she says, after she broke up. But it has returned in recent years after she dis­covered a thriving community through kink events in Mumbai. “Finding a com­munity has meant a lot, because you find others just like you, get to talk about and understand their experiences too,” she says.

Seghetti, who started The Intimacy Cu­rator about six years ago feeling the need for a counselling service that would work on resolving relationship and intimacy issues, began working on kink-related subjects, she says, because of the sheer volume of cases with these subjects com­ing to her. “I used to get a lot of couples, for instance, whose relationships were getting strained. And a lot of this was connected to the fact that they were having the kind of sex that they were not really interested in having,” Seghetti says. Pointing to the nega­tive representation of kink in pop culture as something that is deviant and dark, Seghetti says that having such desires leads to a lot of shame and anxiety. “I would get people who had never spoken about their fantasies to anyone, not even their partners. Some were married for 20 years, and their partners had no clue their husband or wife was kinky.” Seghetti tries to normalise hav­ing such feelings among her clients. But there is only so much a counselling session can do. So she began working on hosting kink events, through which the practice of kink could not just be normalised, but also made fun while ensuring it remains safe. “You need people just like you to normalise your experience. You need a sense of com­munity when you are a bit different from the norm,” she says.

To Panda, a tech professional in Mumbai who goes by this pseudonym, while the misconceptions about kink are irksome, the real challenge comes in accepting your desires without judgement. Panda, who as a non-monogamist has sev­eral consenting partners, began practising kink about three years ago. He identifies himself as a dominant, with a particular kink in bondage, but it was his discovery that he also enjoyed choking that brought in a lot of self-doubt. “Societal upbring­ing plays a big part in your thinking. You grow up with a lot of preconceived notions and misconceptions about certain things. I would question myself why I liked it [choking], whether this was morally right or not. A lot of judgement really,” he says. This is even though Panda practised it only with consenting adults, with boundaries and safe words (words selected by indi­viduals to withdraw consent from any act at any point) being fixed before any act was initiated.

The subculture of BDSM navigates a particularly complicated corner of sexu­ality. While most practitioners identify themselves as either dominant, submis­sive, or switch (oscillating between the first two), these identities are themselves fluid and can change, depending on a participant’s mood or partner. There are also various types of kinksters, each with their own kink, or combination of kinks, but also asexual kinksters, some of whom do not engage in sex at all because their pleasure comes from the process of deny­ing sexual pleasure. Some members of this community view it as just a lifestyle choice, while others claim it is something much deeper, akin to a sexual identity. In fact, many of them view themselves as part of the larger queer community. If the LGBTQ community challenges the notions of what is considered normal by subverting the premise of “who” one can desire, their queerness stems from, some contend, challenging the notion of “how” one can desire. BDSM can also be seen as flying in the face of feminism, since inequality of re­lations—with the practice of domination and submission, and power structures—is the bedrock of its practice. BDSM practi­sioners also view themselves, not as devi­ating from the norm, as some may think they do, but rather the rest of the world as “vanilla”, the term they use to describe people who do not participate in kink.

Asmi, the pseudonym of a Delhi-based writer who identifies herself as a kinkster and has written a few online books on BDSM, says while kink may come across as just a collection of fetishes, it goes much deeper than that. “It is about deep-seated emotions like trust, the desire to let go, or the need to give or take control,” she says.

Asmi was introduced to BDSM some­time around 2007, when she began en­countering practitioners, most of them living abroad, on online forums. This was a time, she says, when very few kinksters from India seemed to be online. Since then she has been an active practitioner, both in her personal life and as someone who has helped create groups and organised munches in Delhi, and has witnessed the growth of kink groups online.

Kink circles fostered by responsible plat­forms like The Intimacy Curator put em­phasis on creating safe spaces, and the need to negotiate boundaries and seek consent. It is said that contrary to popular belief, it is re­ally the submissives who have the ultimate control in BDSM play since the person can withdraw consent anytime. But exploita­tion, Asmi says, happens quite frequently, with perpetrators manipulating and using the perceived borderlessness of sadomas­ochistic practice to inflict and cloak abuse.

Aanchal Narang, the founder of Anoth­er Light Counselling, which provides men­tal health and counselling services, who often deals with cases involving kink, re­calls being consulted by an individual who wanted his female partner to enact the role of a slave. “He wanted to be able to have full control over her, not just in the bedroom, but always, and over every decision from what she wore to what she did. He said this was what turned him on. The girl was very clear that this wasn’t something she would like or desire. This was clearly wrong and unethical,” Narang says. “And when we didn’t support him, he left, furious.”

Narang sees a lot of cases of kink, and the problems can vary, she says, from people feeling shame about their desires, or getting couples around to the idea of participating in it, to cases such as those of people who try to unethically push non-consenting part­ners to perform according to their fetishes.

Back in Mumbai, as the event draws to a close, Jha, who has stripped to his undergar­ment, is lying on a table, with various food items placed over him. This is the last part of the event, dubbed The Last Supper, and everyone gathers around him. Over the next few minutes, a group of women poke his body with forks and spoons, eating off him, but also spitting back when they have chewed into his mouth. Jha is then strung up and kicked, and then pierced with a needle, followed by one participant— Seghetti—drinking the blood collected in a vial. It is a performance that is said to be something some members of the kink com­munity seek pleasure in. But to most indi­viduals, it would probably appear revolting.

Later, however, I witness a moment of tenderness. We are in the common wash­room, the sounds of the party outside only a faint trace. Beside the sink is Seghetti, tend­ing to Jha’s wounds, asking if he is hurt.

BDSMbondage disciplineconsentdominanceIndian societymasochismresponsible practitionerssadismSubmission