In the new basement offices of Maxim, the British lads' magazine launched in India this month, Sunil Mehra, the editor, sets out his policy. ‘We don't do breasts. We don't do nipples. We do cleavage - that's our cultural template,' he said.
Studying proofs of the magazine's second edition, Mehra is navigating new terrain, trying to identify the boundaries of sexual acceptability in an increasingly permissive India. For the first issue he erred on the side of lewdness, superimposing the head of a famous actress on the body of a woman wearing transparent knickers, and ended up fighting off legal proceedings. Now he is veering towards caution. February's cover girl is Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor and the strapline promises ‘Eye-frying pics: More Kareena - Less Clothes'. On the cover Kapoor displays maybe an inch of midriff, but otherwise looks as if she could be on the way to meet her grandmother. Inside, pictures show her draped across a sofa, wearing a sensible T-shirt and a skirt which is only a tiny bit short. Readers' eyes will remain unfried.
Gentle titillation appears to be a winning formula. ‘I have to walk a razor- fine line,' Mehra said. ‘This is India, after all. I don't think Indian men are comfortable with total nudity.'
Maxim's arrival is the first attempt to export lad culture to India, but publishers of other men's titles have also expressed interest in targeting its growing population of rich young male consumers. The rival Condé Nast group is looking at bringing GQ to India and Playboy's chief executive, Christie Hefner, daughter of the magazine's founder, Hugh, said her company was aiming at a launch, though its magazine ‘would not have nudity and I don't think it would be called Playboy'
Most media analysts agree India has no lad culture of the sort that fuelled Maxim's success when it launched in Britain in 1995, but 80,000 copies of the first Indian edition sold out in 10 days. ‘This is just the beginning; others will follow,' Suhel Seth, a Delhi-based advertising executive said. ‘There have always been flesh magazines in India, but until recently you wouldn't want to be seen carrying them, so they were sold in paper bags. That paper bag culture has been dispensed with.'
Vasanti Rao, director of the Centre for Media Studies in Delhi, said there would be a market for lads' mags among a new generation of young men, living alone for the first time. ‘In the countryside people live with extended families. You would not want to sit with your sisters reading this. Changing lifestyles in urban India have given people a new privacy.'
International women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan have been pushing the boundaries of sexual openness in India for about a decade, but the men's market has not previously been targeted by foreign publishers. Among the domestic English-language titles available, Indian men could choose from Man's World, offering gardening and interior decoration tips, or Debonair, showing skimpily dressed girls headlined ‘nubile nymphets'. Pornography is illegal, but available under the counter.
Attitudes towards sex are changing swiftly in India, but Puritanism and permissiveness still coexist. Many Bollywood films still use such euphemisms as thunder or butterflies kissing to denote sex, and there is a long way to go before the nation readopts the relaxed mindset which inspired the Kama Sutra. Beyond the capital, displays of conservatism can be extreme. This month TV images were broadcast across the country of police in the northern town of Meerut beating young couples sitting in a park as part of a drive to eliminate ‘indecent displays' of affection between unmarried couples.
When the actress Khushboo, who goes by one name, said last year that men should not expect their brides to be virgins, arguing that premarital sex was fine as long as it was safe, she was pelted with tomatoes, old shoes and rotten eggs by conservative groups and taken to court.
Instead of celebrating her stance, Maxim's inaugural edition had a mocked-up photograph of Khushboo half naked beneath a slogan declaring: ‘Of course, I am a virgin if you don't count from the behind.' Khushboo threatened to sue and Maxim was forced last week to make a public apology.
Gentle titillation appears to be a winning formula. ‘I have to walk a razor- fine line,' Mehra said. ‘This is India, after all. I don't think Indian men are comfortable with total nudity.'
Maxim's arrival is the first attempt to export lad culture to India, but publishers of other men's titles have also expressed interest in targeting its growing population of rich young male consumers. The rival Condé Nast group is looking at bringing GQ to India and Playboy's chief executive, Christie Hefner, daughter of the magazine's founder, Hugh, said her company was aiming at a launch, though its magazine ‘would not have nudity and I don't think it would be called Playboy'
Most media analysts agree India has no lad culture of the sort that fuelled Maxim's success when it launched in Britain in 1995, but 80,000 copies of the first Indian edition sold out in 10 days. ‘This is just the beginning; others will follow,' Suhel Seth, a Delhi-based advertising executive said. ‘There have always been flesh magazines in India, but until recently you wouldn't want to be seen carrying them, so they were sold in paper bags. That paper bag culture has been dispensed with.'
Vasanti Rao, director of the Centre for Media Studies in Delhi, said there would be a market for lads' mags among a new generation of young men, living alone for the first time. ‘In the countryside people live with extended families. You would not want to sit with your sisters reading this. Changing lifestyles in urban India have given people a new privacy.'
International women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan have been pushing the boundaries of sexual openness in India for about a decade, but the men's market has not previously been targeted by foreign publishers. Among the domestic English-language titles available, Indian men could choose from Man's World, offering gardening and interior decoration tips, or Debonair, showing skimpily dressed girls headlined ‘nubile nymphets'. Pornography is illegal, but available under the counter.
Attitudes towards sex are changing swiftly in India, but Puritanism and permissiveness still coexist. Many Bollywood films still use such euphemisms as thunder or butterflies kissing to denote sex, and there is a long way to go before the nation readopts the relaxed mindset which inspired the Kama Sutra. Beyond the capital, displays of conservatism can be extreme. This month TV images were broadcast across the country of police in the northern town of Meerut beating young couples sitting in a park as part of a drive to eliminate ‘indecent displays' of affection between unmarried couples.
When the actress Khushboo, who goes by one name, said last year that men should not expect their brides to be virgins, arguing that premarital sex was fine as long as it was safe, she was pelted with tomatoes, old shoes and rotten eggs by conservative groups and taken to court.
Instead of celebrating her stance, Maxim's inaugural edition had a mocked-up photograph of Khushboo half naked beneath a slogan declaring: ‘Of course, I am a virgin if you don't count from the behind.' Khushboo threatened to sue and Maxim was forced last week to make a public apology.
