No sex please, we're Maharashtrian!

PUNE: She is a fine young sexualfreak. And he is a teenager with a healthy interest in sex. That is to say, hewatches porn films on his new comp, in his self-contained room (with independentaccess mind you).
Sometimes she joins him. What’s more, his pa hasgraciously given him a book on sex. Some chapters of which, he had discovered onhis own anyway! They have a friend who gives them the seedy CDs.
Once,they all come together and decide to talk. Slowly and steadily, they open up thepandora’s box of their secret sex lives — incest, homosexualviolence... you name it! For an audience which would like to believe teenagersin India, especially good Maharashtrian children, know nothing about sex, thestory is as relentlessly hardhitting as a battering ram. The fact that thewriter of this one-act play is a 17-year-old, adds to the shock value.
Interestingly, the playwright, Vaibhav Abnave, is also this year’sHSC topper in the arts stream and the play, S.E.X. shooo!’ won the bestexperimental play award at the Theatre Academy’s recent state-levelcompetition for original one-act plays. So what is this freaky chakkar?
Isit an attempt to shock and seduce? “Certainly not,� replies Vaibhav,“This is not a play about campus sexuality. It is a play aboutrelationships. I wanted to show the Catch-22 situation of relationships, whereyou can’t get closer, even as friends, unless you are frank. And once youare frank, things become unpleasant and it becomes difficult to remain friends.
“The youngsters’ complex about sex and sexual matters is veryreal. And so are the sexual fiends depicted in my play. But they are allincidental to the play. “I wrote the play as a project for a recentBritish Council workshop for young playwrights. And the Theatre Academy contestwas restricted to original scripts.�
That still leaves the questionabout the inspiration and conviction to handle topics “My influences arefrom Marathi literature. Vijay Tendulkar and Shyam Manohar have bluntly handledsexual topics in the past!�
So do we have another Tendulkar in themaking? “No, I would like to have something else as a full-time career andwrite on the sides. I will possibly go join civil services. We’ll see aMarathi Upamanyu Chatterjee then, perhaps!