There is always a first time
It comes to me like any other video on WhatsApp, from my best friend Nimmi and with the words Forwarded many times italicised at the top.
the random shit I woke up to, check it out babe. Sorry to ruin your morning :/
Nimmi is the most chronically offline person I know, and now she has sent me something that has clearly left a mark. Half-awake, I open the link expecting to see some politically incorrect spoof or stand-up comedy. Instead, I am presented with a steamy video.
There is a young woman, and she is being fucked. The camera is sideways, stashed away inside some closet. It looks like any standardissue hotel room.
The video begins in media res – the woman, lying on her back at the edge of the bed, her hair wild, legs in the air. I zoom in, stretching the screen to see her face up close, but I cannot find any identifying features. The man is out of the frame. He is represented only by his cock. I fast-forward to where she is slowly turning towards the camera. Even without zooming in further, I can see that it is my fucking face.
I have made home movies with exes, lovers, random hook-ups, always, almost always, only on my phone. I have a trademark pout. I have a favourite filter. These angles are not mine. This video is wrong.
The man gestures for her to get on all fours and plants his left foot on the bed, hiding her ass. She is undeniably perfect from this angle – tiny, tender, all hourglass, all clear honey skin. She wears the generic layered balayage that is inflicted upon every young woman who walks into a Looks Salon in Delhi. Could this be me, I wonder for a brief second, on a very drunken night, a very, very long time ago? But the woman here is wearing a lacy two-toned brown bra, which the man makes no attempt to remove – I am the kind of girl who sheds all her clothes in the first five seconds – maybe he is an ass guy, after all. On closer inspection, I must concede it is not my ass – unless my personal trainer has secretly put me on steroids or a sugar daddy financed a Brazilian butt lift without me knowing. At least she has shaved her pussy. There is some consolation there.
He is going harder. I’m worn out from just watching the relentlessness. Now she is on her knees, going down on him. At one point she tries to look up, maybe to say something, and he pushes her head back down. They carry on like nothing has happened. I cringe just watching them. This woman gives head with the singular focus of a surgeon performing some complex procedure. She has deduced that what is required of her is utmost reverence. In contrast, my blow job persona is absolutely performative. When I go down on a man, I am playing the role of a Pornhub director maxxing out the visual element. I briefly glimpse the man’s profile as he lets out a soft moan. I still cannot identify him. He remains faceless throughout the episode. He disappointingly doesn’t come. He pulls out and exits the scene.
This is where it ends. Thankfully.
She is still wearing that brown bra.
I download the video. I mute the audio before replaying it frame by frame – in dread, in desperation. I watch it four times.
It is not me.
It is my fucking face.
Cut, copy, paste
I do not want to open my laptop. I turn my phone back on and click on Twitter.
My worst fears have come true. I have 8,000 new followers. I cannot access my notifications but they are flooded because there is no number, meaning even Twitter has given up counting.
A circle of keyboard trolls with usernames like @aryanalpha108, jerking off to their saffron-coloured dreams of Hindu supremacy, have already started making memes about me.
In one, there is a car at a petrol station with four fuel nozzles pumping a single tank. Another has a screengrab of the same woman from the porn clip and, instead of the random faceless dude of the video, they have photoshopped the faces of Opposition politicians between his shoulders.
#AmritaChaturvediVideo #AmritaChaturvediNude #AmritaChaturvediSex #AmyXXX
The hashtags of my name have reached the top ten in India. Soft porn engagement farmers around the world are riding them to hike up their follower counts, plugging obscure links to all sorts of steamy content. The majority lead to Asian/black women with cum all over their faces.
I am no longer a name. I am a trend.
Notoriety as the wild-card entry to celebrity
My exponential exposure is on WhatsApp, Twitter, random YouTube channels – it is sheer craziness. I’d prepared for fame, not infamy.
Is this what it’s like to be a celebrity?
No, celebrities have money and a PR team. Celebrities have flattering photos to run with the most unsavoury stories. Celebrities can force their mother father aunty cousin exes driver cook cleaner to sign NDAs. Celebrities can wear oversized shades, flashing peace signs to annoying paparazzi. Celebrities can outsource the troubleshooting to some dude-bro’s tech start-up who will trend a face-saving hashtag. Celebrities emerge from their trials stronger, every narrative hijacked and rearranged in their favour.
I am a nobody. I have fuck-all. My once-upon-a-time 15 minutes of fame on reality TV count for nothing. The only thing handed to me on a platter is instant recall. It is like being an early-career Kardashian before the rebrand. It’s like being Mia Khalifa minus the spectacular tits and comeback game (cit: “A soldier sells his body to the government”). I’m just here, taking hit after hit.
Excerpted with permission from Fieldwork As A Sex Object, Meena Kandasamy, HarperCollins India.
