Bibliofile

But Wendy Perriam nicked him to literature’s least-wanted prize with an extract from Tread Softly: "She lay back on the bed while he positioned himself above her, then she slid her feet up his chest and on to his shoulders." And if you think Perriam has pinched her description from the Kama Sutra, the love talk that follows seems straight out of the prosaic Indian classic: "Even Mr Hughes’ penis has a seductive pin-striped foreskin...the jargon he’d used at the consultation had become bewitching love-talk: ‘...dislocation of the second MTPJ...titanium hemi-implant...’" "Yes!" she whispered back. "Dorsal subluxation...flexion deformity of the first metatarsal..."

Very little may have come out of the Neemrana lit-fest; we’ve yet to see its many discussions compended into a book. But it seems to have set a trend in retreats. Roli Books, bolstered perhaps by the success of its first attempt last year, held its second Writers’ Retreat in Mussoorie, while the British Council is planning a Women Writers’ Retreat early next year. Well-known publishers from Kerala, DC Books, have an even more ambitious plan—to get a guest list like Neemrana to attend a retreat in God’s Own Country.

Medical jargon is not the only jargon to have crept into literary writing on sex. Even Chairman Mao’s become an erotic symbol. In Anchee Min’s Wild Ginger, shortlisted for the Bad Sex Prize, a couple makes love to the sound of murmured quotes from Mao’s little red book, with a climactic: "He groaned, ‘Oh! Chairman Mao!’"