PERINEUM

Perineum Nether Parts of the Empire

AMBARISH SATWIK

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First published by Penguin Books India 2007 Copyright © Ambarish Satwik 2007 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This is a work of fiction. While it is fixed both historically and chronologically and the characters are not wholly fictional, situations, incidents and dialogues in this work are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. They are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. ISBN 9780143102410 Typeset in Sabon by Mantra Virtual Services, New Delhi

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To Aai, Baba and Ruma

Contents Bobby Clive’s Circumcision 1 Mongrel 11 Vaginismus 21 The Beresfords 33 Zafar 49 Bombay Bubonic 55 The Abscess 73 George V 81 The Proselytiser 107 Baker’s Scrotum 119 December 1929 129 The Qissago 133 Ziarat 155

There’s a widow in sleepy Chester Who weeps for her only son; There’s a grave on the Pabeng river, A grave that the Burmans shun And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tells how the work was done. —Rudyard Kipling Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads

? One should expect that Col. Clive, by his uncommon Popularity with ye Sex (women) & his excessive Exercize of ye Generative Instruments, is possess’d of impressive and imposing Virile Parts; to ye contrary: in examining him for a suspected Clap, his Verpa (circumcised penis) erected to scarce 12 Cms., which is indeed below ye Average! Circumferece-wize, however, he hath ye palm over ye Average; and his inordinate Erectability is like to that of ye Simiae (apes), who are purported extreamly Copulatory. —Dr Ives’ journal entry about Robert Clive, September 2, 1757 Allen Edwards, The Rape of India

The perineum refers to both an external surface area and a shallow compartment of the body. The perineal compartment lies inferior to the pelvic outlet and is separated from the pelvic cavity by the pelvic diaphragm, which is formed by the levator ani and the coccygeus muscles and has osseofibrous boundaries. In the anatomical position, the perineum is the narrow region between the proximal parts of the thighs; however when the lower limbs are abducted, the perineum is a diamond shaped area extending from the mons pubis anteriorly, the medial surfaces (insides) of the thighs laterally, and the gluteal folds and upper end of the intergluteal (natal) cleft posteriorly. A transverse line joining the anterior ends of the ischial tuberosities divides the perineum into two triangles: The anal triangle, containing the anus, is posterior to this line. The urogenital triangle, containing the root of the scrotum and penis in males or the external genitalia in females, is anterior to this line. The mid point of the line joining the ischial tuberosities is the central part of the perineum overlying the perineal body, the attachment for the perineal muscles. —Keith Moore and Arthur Dalley Clinically Oriented Anatomy

The Female Perineum

The Male Perineum



Bobby Clive’s Circumcision 

On 15 December 1742, Bobby Clive, formally trained in bookkeeping and penmanship, entered the service of the Honourable Company of Merchants of London trading to the East Indies as a clerk and was selected to serve at Fort St. George (Madras), the headquarters of British commerce on the Coromandel Coast.

? Subject protested that he had suffr’d strictum Preputium all these 8 and 10 years, and that no evil Effects had come of it; but his extream Irritability, manifestly unconnected with a sensitive Nature, and ye uncommon Excitability of his Membrum virile to an indifferent touch betrays an Excess of Manustupration occasion’d only by an unnatural Condition productive of Prurience and Satyrism. —(Dr John Rae, civil surgeon at Fort St. George, in his medical record book) obby Clive’s deepest ardour was for one particular wench who had endured his venery merrily and languorously and, as a consequence, had cast a blight over his privy member. In his little monastic cell in the Cranny Hole, he lay on his back, at his lowest ebb, her lovely fundament not quite out of his mind.

B

Flashes were seen outside. A storm was nigh upon the Coromandel coast. The sky lit up in sheets and the prentices all lined up on the ramparts at Half Moon Point to watch the strokes. Soon the weather was so thick they couldn’t see the Marlborough or the Heathcote on the yonder side of the waters. They were at war with France. The hostilities had reached the Indian seas. Marquis Duplex, the Pondicherry Gouverneur was almost sexually aroused by the quantity of cloth lying embaled at Fort St. David. It did not take very much to sexually arouse Duplex, but the prospect of buggering Morse in Madras was more exciting than all the wickedness in Jeanne begum’s derriere. The Garrison was rife with rumours that a fleet of privateers had been launched from Mauritius for the Madras job and that La Bourdonnay, the whoreson, was in command. They didn’t have a lot of faith in Captain Peter Eckman or the Company’s covenanted turds in the Garrison. So it was up to Commodore Barnet’s squadron to defend their arses and their honour, but only if they reached the coast in good time.

? She probably was a Gentoo pariah. She clearly wasn’t a Moor because the Moors normally had vestures for the mammaries. The pariah females straddled their surroundings like animals, and unlike the women of Shropshire, whose breasts and collarbones stood out in relief, the appendages on the black pariahs shared a

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commonality of purpose with the rest of their bodies. She was primarily the Gunner’s woman, but for many months had been the staple of the local Polligars and the company’s doobash, and was generally considered a lavish shag for half a pagoda. In her oeuvre, the most celebrated procedure—celebrated, that is, in the English service—was the Maelstrom, which was performed kneeling in front of the subject. For a pariah—and she was the Right Honourable Company’s communal whore—her orifices showed good husbandry and splendid form. Bobby Clive’s blight was not so much a canker of the organ as a painful distension of its distal end. A constriction had effected itself around the glans. The prepuce had been retracted rather forcefully in the course of one such maelstrom and had remained there unattended thenceforth. He had a dim, opium-ridden memory of the whole thing. There she was, squatting before him after coition and pissing in three distinct streams, each in the happy colour of the Laburnum flower. A slight warm prickle had just commenced on his penis, red and visibly nettled by the shag. Then, gently spurred by opium, he had lost his senses.

? The next morning he was woken up, in equal proportions, by the drill of the morning guns, Maskelyne, and the throb of his degloved penis. Edmund ‘Mun’ Maskelyne was a junior grade prentice

Perineum

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