Sex and the Games

Come October, Delhi will host an event that is likely to have athletes, officials and spectators hopping beds. There is an entire sex industry gearing up.

“Young girls, college-going girls, models, Russians,” offers the guy at CWG Delhi Escorts service, identifying the broad categories that international clients at the XIX Commonwealth Games (CWG) will get to choose from. “Indian girls, Rs 15,000 for two hours. Russian, Rs 20,000 for two hours.”

The offer comes in response to a posed telephone request for escorts on behalf of a Canadian delegation expected to arrive in New Delhi during the first week of October, in time for the biggest ever international sporting event to be hosted by India. And also its most controversial.

The website of CWG Delhi Escorts (cwgdelhiescorts.com) has undergone a bit of an image change after Mid-Day, the Bombay daily, published grabs of it featuring the Commonwealth Games logo. (‘Games Mascot being used illegally to promote sex tourism’, 20 May 2010). The CWG logo and mascot image is thankfully now off the home page of the website. The title now reads ‘CWG (Call With Grace) Delhi Escort’. 

The man who answers the phone at the escort services office calls himself ‘Sam’. He wants a face-to-face meeting at Mahipalpur, a suburb close to the airport, before he can seal the deal. Hopefully, he is not holding his breath.

In contrast, the lady at Delhi 69 Escorts, which describes itself as an ‘Exclusive Delhi Escorts Agency’, seems a lot more at ease with phone conversations. Perhaps because this time it is a man with a European accent calling. In a recorded conversation available with Open, this is what the lady on the other side of the line has to say: “For Commonwealth Games, you will have to make advance bookings. We already have so many bookings for Commonwealth, so many bookings. We definitely recommend prior bookings, we cannot guarantee the availability of girls for Commonwealth. Rates will depend on the profile [of the girl], we don’t have fixed rates, the charges may vary according to profile… We have Russian girls, but I would suggest you go for Indian girls. They are more high profile, they speak well, they are educated, and they are fluent in English.” Currently, Delhi 69’s minimum charge is Rs 20,000. She claims it could even go up to Rs 50,000 during the Games.

All this, you’d think, is hush hush. Evidently not. Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, in whom the CWG has found its sharpest critic yet, wondered aloud about the sexual aspect of the Games on a televised debate recently. “The media have reported that there are going to be 150 condom vending machines installed in the Games Village alone,” Aiyar said. “The report says that 3,000 to 3,300 packets of condoms will be sold every day from these machines, and that each packet contains two condoms, which means over a 15-day period, there will be one lakh condoms sold. What is the game that is going to be played at the Commonwealth Games? Is this sex tourism or sports tourism?” 

But Mr Aiyar, sex and sports are two sides of the same gold medal. As activities, they are twins. Just that one wears clothes. Where there’s sports, there’s sex.

“If a model is ready to give you a blow job, will you say ‘no’?” A coach of an Indian tennis player posed this query some years ago. This happened in Chennai at the annual ATP Tour tournament. The Indian player was at the peak of his career. He was living it up off court as well. The player’s orgiastic nights were the object of much envy among those attending the tournament. But there was also some concern. “He should be focusing on his matches,” someone said of the player. “He can have as much fun as he wants after the tournament.” That is when the player’s coach made this rhetorical, clinching point. “If a model is ready to give you a blow job, will you say ‘no’?”

Cheers. Applause. Advantage, sex. 

The euphoria of a sporting triumph, especially, is incomplete without sex.  India had just beaten Pakistan in Melbourne to win the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. Though the event and its telecasts were top tier, this was still an amateur era by today’s standards. Many of India’s Champagne soaked players walked to their hotel, just across a park. When a couple of them encountered sex workers, their victory-adled blood circulation went into overdrive. But the rates were steep. Such was their desperation, however, that they said, “Can you give us some discount? We just won the WCC.” Whether the girls agreed or not is unclear, but the incident underlined the close connection between sport and sex. 

In the past, Indian hockey and football players were in far better shape than cricketers, and appealed more to women in whichever part of the world they played. It is said about a hockey player that he enjoyed a fling with a woman in Argentina. Afterwards he said, “I’m a married man with two children, and only now I know what sex is.” 

On foreign tours, Indian coaches find that their wards are distracted from their job by easy opportunities for sex. So they use a thorn to get rid of a thorn. They offer to arrange the sex themselves. Get it out of the system, boys, then focus. On a disastrous tour of Australia, a famous Indian cricketer coaching the team shared his misery with journalists. “I told the players that if they wanted girls, I would bring them girls. But once on the field, they should give their 100 per cent.”  

Even in relatively conservative India, the promise of sex is palpable at sports events. An event manager associated with the Chennai tennis tournament says, “There would be models at parties, and it was obvious they were there to entertain the players. It was all done professionally, through modelling agencies. The models saw it as part of their jobs. They needed assignments and exposure. Besides, tennis players are attractive, so the models did not mind sleeping with them.”  Indeed.

An event manager involved with another successful annual sports event in India says, “Yes, our guests often ask for escorts. Some ask indirectly. Some just say they want a fuck. Foreigners are more open than Indians because it is no big deal in their cultures. More than the participating athletes, it is the brand ambassadors or officials who ask for girls. The athletes usually abstain before the event. For us, it is an opportunity to keep everyone happy.” Asked how the services are arranged, the organiser laughs, “I don’t know the details. But it’s no big deal and I’m sure some of my colleagues have their contacts.”

Coming back to New Delhi, and Aiyar’s use of the term ‘sex tourism’, the deluge that is predicted will have to happen before it can be believed. The media coverage from hell that everything to do with the Games has been getting lately isn’t doing wonders for Delhi’s sex appeal, in more senses than one.

The ‘one lakh tourists’ figure that has been bandied about is looking more and more absurd. So, not all escort services are sitting notepad-in-hand taking down advance bookings.  “October is a long way off. Why are you calling now? Rates? Rates are like the share market, they go up and down,” says the irritated voice of a lady at Delhi Russian Escort Services.

Supply could also be a function of demand. There is a lot of talk of girls from ‘Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Bangalore….’, not to mention ‘Russian and international girls’ descending on the Capital to cash in on the Games. But they will arrive, if at all, only once the business arrives. So for now, all we are stuck with is speculation. 

But when it comes from the president of the apex body of India’s tourism industry, the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), it has to be regarded with greater respect. Vijay Thakur is concerned about the influx of single women into Delhi from other countries during the Games. “This is the time when these kind of things do happen,” he says, “Singles from Russia and its neighbouring countries, also from Vietnam and the Philippines can be expected to come here during the Games. It is their profession, and they are likely to make the best use of such an event. These kind of things should be restricted as much as possible. And it is for the police and government agencies to do something about it.”

Thakur has some advice: “There should be strict screening during immigration and also while granting visas to singles travelling to India during the Games.” Clearly, the depressing state of hotel bookings is not the only thing worrying the IATO president. So, while it is safe to conclude Delhi will see more than its usual share of action this October, how much of it and at what rates is simply too soon to tell. 

That brings us back to the headline-grabbing topic of condom vending machines. After the National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) expressed its keenness on installing the machines at the Games’ venues, CWG officials gracefully accepted. Everybody cheered. But they cheered too soon.

It now looks like the condom vending machines may not, after all, see the inside of the multi-crore CWG venues or offices. Says AK Gupta of the Delhi State Aids Control Society (DSACS), speaking to Open on 11 August, “Yesterday, we decided to install condom vending machines in the Central Delhi area with the help of NGOs that work with different high risk groups (commercial sex workers). We did not get sites for condom vending machines at the venues and other areas. That is a very tedious matter. And moreover, it was not agreed upon.” 

It would appear that the condom zeal of CWG officials has turned flaccid. Thus, vending machines have been moved from “venues” to “adjoining areas” or  “prominent hotspots” (for solicitation, presumably). Sources at Naco are in no mood to talk about it. All they say is, “If they give us sites, we can install them. If they don’t, we can’t.”

Whether the reluctance to allow condom vending machines at venues is a case of Indian hypocrisy or a problem of logistics is anybody’s guess. But officials seem to have found a more discreet way of acknowledging the expected frolicking. Condom packets, along with shampoo sachets and food coupons, will be part of the kit that will be given to all athletes and officials.

The bigger cover up plan, as should have been expected, will play itself out at Delhi’s Red Light area, Garstin Bastion Road, commonly known as GB Road.

Contrary to media hype over GB Road brothels being spruced up for the big event with flat screen TVs and new ACs, the word on the street is that it will be shut down for the duration of the Games. Chandaji, who works on GB Road and is attached to anti-trafficking NGO Shakti Vahini, has already been warned. “The police has said that there will be Games in Delhi and that no girl should be seen on the street during that time. It is going to become difficult for us to get customers… the police are saying that if girls are seen on the street, they will be arrested.” Assistant Commissioner of Police for Kamla Market, Manohar Singh had this to say about the plan for GB Road during the Games, “This is a long project. No final decision has been taken on it. Patrolling will intensify in all areas.”

Will it be shut down? “Humare taraf se toh shut down hi hai.” Since GB Road brothels officially do not exist, for the cops, the question of a two-week shutdown doesn’t even arise.

A 2006 survey conducted by DSACS estimated the number of commercial sex workers in Delhi at 60,000. Of these, around 3,000 are on GB Road. The majority, the survey found, are home-based commercial sex networks. A lady in her mid-30s operates such a network from her two-room apartment in a neighbourhood not too far away from the Commonwealth Games Village (official accommodation for participants) in East Delhi. She lives alone and makes money by renting her room to girls who come with clients. “I have only heard that girls are being brought for work. But I haven’t seen any activity yet,” she says, “A client did say that when the Games begin, there will be a lot of work and I will make a lot of money.” How high might rates rise? “Now people ask for Rs 5,000,” she says, “but it could go up to Rs 7,000–8,000.”

The CWG bonanza is likely to go mostly to smartly turned out clandestine networks that operate through mobile phones or internet sites, not downmarket operations. Already, the Games have affected street solicitors who look for roving customers. Sosva, an NGO that targets commercial sex workers in parts of East Delhi, has been monitoring the impact. “Soliciting points are beginning to collapse,” says Project Manager Nadish Mustafa, “Construction work and increased patrolling by the police for security reasons have forced women to migrate. And from what the pimps are saying, the demand now is more for college girls and working girls [those seen as holding respectable day jobs].”

Given the already massive proportions of trafficking of women and prostitution in India, it would be naive to expect the Government to lose sleep over reports about how the Commonwealth Games are exacerbating the problems.

Anti-trafficking NGO Shakti Vahini has reported an increase in girls being trafficked especially from Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal in recent months. “The Commonwealth Games has become a disaster in regions affected with Maoist problems. Tribal girls are migrating in massive numbers to Delhi for livelihood and are getting trafficked into these commercial sex networks,” says Shakti Vahini’s Rishi Kanth, who is also a member of the Government’s central advisory committee on trafficking of children. “We can judge how serious the Government is by the fact that in the last six-seven months, the committee has not had a single meeting.”

If Facebook activity is anything to go by, the ‘Stop Sex Trafficking for CWG 2010’ campaign seems to have found an audience. Says Ruchira Gupta, who started it and is the founder of Apne Aap, which fights sex trafficking, “The sex-industry will take advantage of the vulnerability of hundreds of young girls who have been brought to the city for construction work for the CWG to meet the spurt in demand for prostituted sex. I am also worried about protection for these girls.” Gupta wants to keep the CWG from becoming a ‘pimping opportunity’.

Where athletes go, sexual activity is frenetic at multi-discipline events like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games. But they don’t need escorts. They have each other, don’t forget. In fact, it is common knowledge that Games Villages are hotbeds of hook-ups, especially after the athletes have completed their events. Typically, swimmers are the most sought-after species in the Village. But those from other disciplines are not numb to the vibe.

Matthew Syed, the English table tennis player and now a popular sports writer, once wrote, ‘I played my first Games in Barcelona in 1992 and got laid more often in those two-and-a-half weeks than in the rest of my life up to that point. That is to say twice, which may not sound a lot, but for a 21-year-old undergraduate with crooked teeth, it was a minor miracle. Barcelona was, for many of us Olympic virgins, as much about sex as it was about sport. I spent so much time in a state of lust that I could have passed out.’  

Says Abhinav Bindra, who won a shooting gold at the 2008 Beijing Games, “The first time you stay at a Games Village, it can overwhelm you.” Asked if one of the reasons for this is the temptation of casual relationships, he replies, “Not for me. But for some athletes, it could be. It depends on how badly you want to win. If you are hungry for the medal, you will shut out the distractions. It also gets easier to concentrate the second time onwards.” This shows in Bindra’s performances. Though he enjoyed Sydney 2000 the most, he performed better in Athens and Beijing. In Athens, he came close to a medal. In Beijing, he won it. Asked if he let his hair down in Beijing after he’d won gold, he says, “Well, I left the next day.”  

Pankaj Advani won a billiards gold for India at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha. Asked for his observation of casual relationships in Games Villages, he says: “I have witnessed many such cases.” Overall, he describes the Games Village as “a blast”. “There is a theatre, an entertainment centre, and to top it all, there is this huge canteen for athletes which is open 24 by 7. It’s a hangout for us.” 

There are some athletes who cannot resist temptations even if their event is the next day. And yet, they do well. The night before the long jump competition at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, desire got the better of Bob Beamon. When guilt inevitably followed, he felt he had blown his chance. But a very motile Beamon leapt 8.90 metres. 

The world record stood for 23 years, till Mike Powell leapt 8.95 in the 1991 Tokyo World Championships. But Beamon’s Olympic record still stands.

athletesCommonwealth Gamessex industry