By Deepti Datt

NIP TUCK is an American television series about the volatile lives of two mercenary, Miami plastic surgeons. Often crass, sometimes funny, and always grossly voyeuristic, the show devoted an entire season following the episodic storyline of a pregnant, single woman. This was the first time I was watching an almost true portrayal of the hysterical and riotously feral sexuality of pregnancy.

NIP TUCK is an American television series about the volatile lives of two mercenary, Miami plastic surgeons. Often crass, sometimes funny, and always grossly voyeuristic, the show devoted an entire season following the episodic storyline of a pregnant, single woman. This was the first time I was watching an almost true portrayal of the hysterical and riotously feral sexuality of pregnancy. Along with SEX AND THE CITY and 24, part of a scant dvd library at a friend’s house where I was staying, NIP AND TUCK became inadvertent monsoon diversion, and a curious reflection of my own second pregnancy.

Back from a working trek across NYC and L.A., and in my seventh-month, I was ensconced, as planned, in a comfortable, old, Goa home, with the renowned “nesting instinct” warmly fulfilled. Here, far from the maddening crowds of Bombay and producing for television, I was to await our second child in calm and quiet. Lush, gorgeous and fluorescent-green monsoon days passed in third-trimester Yoga-asanas and regular visits with my midwife at the water-birthing clinic where I was to deliver. In his most poignant act of caring yet, my husband had arranged to cater for my every comfort, and faithfully flew down to Goa every Friday after the week’s work in Bombay. Everything seemed perfectly in order and peaceful for the baby to come.

But, as any woman who has been pregnant knows, there is little that is perfect or even vaguely “in order” about those nine months, and especially the last three. Out the door go manners, etiquette, societal conditioning, logical or linear thinking, and any pretense, whatsoever, at control over your own body. Pregnancy clearly declares who is in charge of the female human body. Nature. And only nature.

All the sweet books on “preparing for your baby” and “what to expect when you’re expecting”, say nothing about the unmistakable dissolution of civilization within the microcosm of body that pregnancy is. While in the rosy-cheeked-peak of health, what a woman also experiences is a no-holds-barred, head-on, Paglia-esque confrontation with her own primal nature. Specifically, an irrepressible, grunting, primordial sexuality that grows right along with the fetus.

A pregnant woman as sexy and sexual? Whoa! Coming clean about erotic desire is, in our culture, already cloaked in repression and denial, or, worse, bastardized in media. So what chance, then, of expressing, or even admitting to, the fiendish sexuality of pregnancy without fear of being deemed a pervert? Pop culture slyly got as far as the nude and fecund Demi Moore. Yet, that now legendary cover of Vanity Fair was a pure and virtually typical, sacred image of the “mother” archetype. What I refer to here about pregnant sexuality, at least for myself, is something else.

For a woman, giving birth is, actually, the final part of the sex act. Enough women have reported experiencing their most explosive and deeply fulfilling, whole-body orgasm as the baby’s head emerges past the pubic birth canal. Writhing through, the birthing baby pushes against a secret sweet spot nature has made so intensely pleasurable that progeny is assured. In fact, childbirth is the culmination of a woman’s sexuality.

And so, I was least interested in learning lullabies or settling drawers with diapers. Nope. All I was interested in was sex. Sex, sex and more sex. I couldn’t get enough. Explanations allot my maniacal cravings to further natural biological urge: semen helps efface the cervix and induces labour; orgasm conditions the parturition muscles; I even considered, perhaps, a subconscious, pre-empted, orgasm-hoarding for the sex-suspended lull that is the cozy, oozing-breasts state of post-natal motherhood. Whatever it was, it was completely beyond me, this voracious, gluttonous rut that made me devour my happily, obliging husband every weekend. Then come Monday and I would be left to my own devices (pun intended) to handle my furious feeding-frenzy until the next weekend. Into the eighth month, the need had grown fierce and raging. Something had to be done. I could not handle it anymore. I knew what I needed and I had to organize it.

Shelli, a girlfriend in LA, was flying down to India with her friends, “Will, Jada and Daphne”, along with a sartorially lustrous cluster of other Hollywood-wives from Mulholland Drive (pretty similar to the sartorially lustrous cluster of Bollywood-wives that populate Bandra… only the westside Sistas “stick together” – no toys there - and play a lot harder…). The entourage was on a privately-jetted learning quest through Delhi, Agra, Dubai and Jerusalem, with a Historian-guide in tow. Shelli understood my situation immediately, as any good girlfriend would. Noting down size, circumference and colour, she promised to carry down my cure, along with several packs of the biodegradable, organic diapers I prefer using, and do a quick side-trip to Goa.

The Goa detour never happened, and I didn’t meet Shelli while she was in India. But, as promised, she did bring down my care-package from LA and left it for me at the reception desk of the Taj Mansingh where she stayed. I asked my mother, who lives in Delhi, to go across, pick up the package and courier it to me in Goa.

What I had overlooked in my planning was that, unlike me with my adopted Indian piety and decorum after a decade here, Shelli is still a blasé LA woman. The required Indian levels of discretion, around “personal gear” of the kind she left for me at the reception desk, probably weren’t even a consideration for her. I should have warned her. And I should have warned my mother.

So, while I have the salaciously dubious honor of Will Smith, Jada Pinkett and Daphne Wayans flying down diapers and a vibrator to India for me – I also have the shocking disgrace of traumatizing my Mamma with the most scandalous of all events she can recall in her recent past. In her words, I made her go and “…pick up a fully-exposed and such a real-looking giant-size man’s penis in a completely see-through plastic case thumko-sharam-nahi-aata-hai-aisey-pregnant-ho-ke-bhi-gajab-kardiya-hai-thumne-bete?!?!!...” at the front desk of a hotel she frequents regularly with her sister to play cards. “… and instruction pictures of how to use it sach-mein-gajab-kardiya-hai-thumne-bete-kya-bolun-main?!?!!...”

My mother has forgiven me a lot through what, she believes, has been my life of complete and total sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll-type, crazed depravity. But this one? I think this one is going to take some time to live down.

Forgetfulness, by the way, is also a notorious outcome of pregnancy. This faux pas with my mother was just the beginning. The cheesy mishap still to come (no pun intended) with this vibrator thing had only just begun. My loss of face was yet to see its sputtering finale.

Wrapped within the organic diapers, my mother sent “the thing” on its way, glad to be rid of it “… kya-paap-kiya-hoga-maine-ki-thum-ye-aise-cheezain-kar-le-the-ho-mujhe-patha-nahi-bete-kya-bolun-main?!?!!...”

By the time my courier package arrived in Goa – three days late and not “overnight” – my mother-induced-paranoia had peaked and I’m convinced the delivery guy from Panjim was smirking as I signed the receipt slip.

I rushed into my bedroom with the package, locking the door behind me, and set to work opening the complex packaging Mamma must have enlisted to save face with the couriers. Mine or her own, I’m not quite sure, and I don’t dare ask. And there, finally, nestled amidst the organic diapers, after its long journey, was my very own, first-ever, personal vibrator. Whoa Shelli! Yup, it was quite a number. I could understand my mother’s dismay.

In LA, my girlfriends from South Central used to call the ceaseless, searchlights-swooping, LAPD choppers, “ghetto birds”. I decided to call this vibrator “ghetto whopper”… it was nothing short of that, in fact: throbbing (in 7 speed-settings from low to high), rubbery, veined, “cappuccino” coloured, six-inches of pictorially instructed, eternally erect, with “optional wall-mounting” suction cups at the base, battery-operated, electronic, penile device in completely clear, plastic, blister packaging, indeed! I carefully wrapped the monster in a sarong and laid it to rest, for appropriate later use, in the back of a clothes drawer in my dressing table.

“So let’s see what it looks like” my husband asked, when he arrived a couple of days later. I went towards the drawer and my mother flashed before my eyes. “Nah, I’m too embarrassed to show you babe”, I replied. I hadn’t even got around to attempt using the humongous contraption. I think I may even have been a bit scared of it.

Monsoon slows down production work in Bombay and my husband had planned longer stays in Goa now, with our delivery date just two weeks away. Logistical gymnastics notwithstanding, I was after all in my 38th week, we had ourselves a fairly good groove going on - albeit an awkward one with my enormous belly.

I mostly stayed at home now, waddling around and finally getting together clothes, blankets and organizing for the baby. Evening entertainment was World Cup and rooting for south-of-the-equator favourites. This being Goa, Brasilian and Portuguese matches would raise loud, raucous shouts into the village night. Avid fans, my husband and I often stayed up to watch the midnight matches. Next morning would be all about hilarious, in-depth discussions with the house staff on how the teams had fared. “England? Che men! onlys defending defending boring men. And this Brasils people?! what they’re doing?! Nothing re!” Deepak, the gardener on the property, perpetually in a yellow and green t-shirt, would complain. His wife, too, was expecting their second child in a couple of months, we discovered.

Almost un-noticed, in the passive state of mind only Goa can maneuver, my delivery date came and went. After another visit to my midwife at the water-birthing clinic, we got busy kickstarting a sex-and-semen-induced labour, and two days later I delivered a baby boy, our gorgeous second child.

My hubby went back to work in Bombay, and the next forty-some days of traditional confinement quickly passed in endless-glowing-happy-breast-feeds, changing diapers and coo-ing over in obeisance to my new little treasure.

Soon enough it was time to leave my lovely Goa and get back to life and work in Bombay. Like all new mothers, I was hectic and still packing right up to an hour before my flight. I’d thrown together a laundry sack of my surplus pregnancy wardrobe, and told Deepak the gardner he could take the lot for his wife or give it away to the church down the road, as he pleased. Another two bags of unused baby’s clothes, blankets and cloth-diapers also went to Deepak for his child due any day now, and I left with a rushed good-bye to the gang in Goa.

It’s been about a month since I’ve been back in the city, and with new baby as priority, only last week did I finally manage to unpack my bags from the three-month stay in Goa… and also realize, with increasing horror, the ghetto-whopper is nowhere to be found.

Where did the vibrator go? I will never know. Either, there is a church in blasphemed uproar somewhere in north Goa, and Deepak the gardner burned to a crisp upon a cross for his innocent donation. Or, Deepak and his wife are wondering, “what toys this Bombay peoples giving to children re?!” I will never know. And I will never ask.

Goa may well be an ideal environment, natural and otherwise (!), to let it all, literally, hang out, and my mother as forward-thinking a woman as a middle-class Indian can be. Neither, I’m sure, is about to forgive me my violation of sexual norms any time soon. I figure several years of laying low in exile should sort it all out.

Deepti Datt is obsessed with art, culture, her 350cc Enfield Bullet and anything Japanese. She calls Goa and Los Angeles home, and finds great inspiration in all things marginal. When she’s not running AXiRVAAD, her restaurant and art gallery in Goa (which the New York Times cites as “legendary”), she writes and produces for television. “I’m a hustler, baby!” Deepti is currently heading up the Events portfolio for Conde Nast in India and the launch of Vogue magazine in the country. This is also her EGO debut.