American artist Miles Patrick’s Indian adventure took a wrong turn last month.
The fifty-five year old, who moved to tourist town Mahabalipuram, known for its famous temples, back in 1998. Things went swimmingly for many years until Patrick reportedly started “seducing” local fishermen, a move that garnered him a five-year jail sentence:
Magistrate of Tirukazhukundram court pronounced the sentence on July 27 after finding Miles Patrick, a resident of New York, guilty of inducing young fishermen into homosexuality by showing pornographic films and giving narcotics.
The court sentenced Srinivasan, a local associate of Patrick, to three-year rigorous imprisonment for aiding and abetting him in his acts.
The two were arrested by the Mahablipuram police last year on a complaint from 25-year old local fisherman Desamuthu.
Though India’s urban citizens have become more accepting in recent years, same-sex loving remains illegal thanks to the colonial era law, Section 377.
Yasuri Yamileth
I’d love to go to India and seduce men … Indian men are hot and hung!
Alan down in Florida
I won’t question the hot part but I’m pretty sure I read that the spread of HIV in the Indian subcontinent was partly due to non-use of condoms because they were too large for the average Indian men. Let me know if I am mistaken.
CHURCHILL-Y
Plz…So by that line of thinking the hindodoos should’ve left in place the colonial institutions along with the colonist themselves since they are so fond of them. Stop making excuses for the elephant drivers, they are backward and if they had been more in-tune with modernity they would’ve stripped away that law long ago. Also its interesting to notice how this took place in a southern darky zone, it always does they are less advanced than the rest. But what can you expect Blacks…
CTnSF
I was just thinking that churchill-y should change his name to chimpanzee-y, but then, that would be an insult to monkeys everywhere. He truly is a putrid individual.
Darth Paul
^^We know. Ignore it.
kank
The stupid thing is that this goes on all the time in India behind closed doors and it’s completely ignored. The country is so divided by sex, men and women have almost no interaction before marriage, and even after marriage a lot of people tend to stay segregated most of the time. Whilst Indian men would never associate the behaviour with being gay, same sex activity goes on from teenage years upwards, but is just very rarely talked about.
tallskin
I have to say that when I was in the south of India, in Kerala state, I was cruised many many times by cute indian boys and men. And we had an obviously gay juve as our waiter in the hotel.
But in general I hated india, I thought it was a revolting place – stepping over dead bodies in the forecourt of a railway station in Delhi, which were totally ignored by the denizens of the city, helped to form my dislike.
However, I have to add that the south is very different from the north. The south has had a communist government for 50 years and it shows in the much better health of the population, socialised medicine, friendlier people and greater equality of wealth. We even saw people with braces on their teeth, people with crutches, plaster on their broken legs etc -GOOD GRIEF! things unheard of in the north where you’re left to rot if you’re ill or injured, unless you’re rich. (Shades of the same difference between the USA and Europe, perhaps?)
Praful
Dear all, here are my two bits
yasuri, thanks for the compliment… we always welcome foreign leches…
Alan, I do not brand all the white guys with their skin colour and say that you all are as intelligent as bush if you really believe your theory… there are grave problems for HIV awareness to spread in a country with 20000 dialects and 40 + spoken languages with less than 60 percent education… so it isnt the size of the head below that matters here…
Churchill, i am sure u are a blonde rather mongolian or something so funnily dumb that your opinions reflect all the convenient cliches about India…. Its not the colour of skin that determines a person’s beauty or intelligence… as i think your thoughts are ugly enough.. also elephant is 10 times mightier if not less than a human, cant be started with ignition… India imports and exports nearly 1/6 th of automobiles on face of this planet
tallskin, biases are funny.. India has one central government and infrastructure is as good or bad in both north and south as any other developing country in tropical belt… as for rest of your experience, I regret that you didnt get the opportunity to witness the grandeur of north india n palaces and hustle bustle of Mumbai which is India’s answer to NY… about amenities and worth of human life, an average indian values his brother much more than other countrymen will… and this is a fact that all of us Indians miss in West in your paper homes and plastic hearts
tallskin
Praful, Indian Chauvinism always amuses me. Read some hilarious things in your press whilst there – such as the Indian army best in the world and the indian navy so good that the US is keen to steal your best technology. Hilarious stuff.
And we did indeed visit some of your battered and badly looked-after palaces. Was utterly horrified to see the indian middle classes having such respect for their historical monuments that they were using penknives to carve out the jewels from the walls, so whole walls and rooms had been stripped of their tiles and glittery bits. And families picknicking on thousand year old stones, dropping their litter everywhere as if they couldn’t care less.
Also these same indian middle classes exhibit utter contempt for the deformed children begging – the only ones giving money to them were western tourists.
But I think what bothered me most was the soul-destroying corruption exhibited everywhere, where we had to bribe people to actually do their fucking jobs.
But you are mistaken in your assertion about the govt in the north being the same as that in the south – Kerala state has had a communist state govt for decades.
We also visited Bombay (a city that didn’t exist before the British and was created by the British, so I will continue to call it Bombay rather than your rather silly hindu chauvenistic re-name) and whilst it is obviously a lot richer than smelly Delhi to call it India’s answer to NY calls into question what question could lead to such an answer! It is also corrupt, smelly and, like everywhere else in India poisoned us everywhere we ate and gave the the infamous delhi belly constantly – have you people never heard of washing your hands after you have a dump!)
As for your absurd assertion that indians value each others’ lives more than westerners do, well all I will do is ask that if you value your fellow indian’s lives so much why don;t you help the poor there? You just allow them to rot on the streets with no help at all. I saw the most indescribably horrible scenes on the streets – thousands and thousands of these horrible sights.
And westerners give millions a year in charity to help India – out of a sense of trying to help our fellow man. As far as I am aware Indians give bugger all out of their own pockets to help each other.
Nope I stand by my impressions of India, namely that is a horrible place – and I shall never return.
CHURCHILL-Y
As always Tallskin your comments are very insightful, I totally enjoy them. Guess India is another rat hole to avoid from the way you describe it. I don’t know why anyone other than anthropologist or perhaps archaeologists would want to go there. And your description of it being a deteriorating place rings not only true for their infrastructure but by the looks of the dribble from No. 8 also in their mentality. Seems they have a knee jerk chauvinistic reaction to us Westerners which they use as self defense to masquerade for their insecurities and shortcomings. Look at the archaic term he uses to refer to people with down syndrome “mongolian”, and here you get the false impression that some of them have some level of intelligence and education. Nothing could be further from the truth as shown by this “American Jailed For “Seducing†Men” story, the homophobic laws they keep in their books, your accounts Tallskin and No. 8’s stupidity.
Devil Incarnate
In India, seducing someone to commit sex is equivalent to rape if the partner later complains. In this case, the seduction was carried out through porn movies and drugs. There have been cases where men have seduced women by making false promises of marrying or lying about their current marital status. The Supreme Court of India has upheld this judicial interpretation. So, one should be cautious with who they have sex with in India, if, of course, you don’t want to be accused of rape later on !!
Bindi, dun dat
What is it with dirty old wanker brits, anyway? Always getting caught trying something with the former colonists that is just a little too ambitious — and in their retirement years.
tallskin
Hey indi, dun dat, you dumb shit. The guy was an american
You think this arrest and sentence is ok??
Goodnessgraciousme
echovic
wow – this is like the dark ages with the racism and the chauvinism! maybe its in humor, but, ladies, nobody cares what you think, particularly when its out of date and moronic! and churchill-y: vile!!! at least tallskin has some idea of what it can be like (tough and desperately poor), but churchill-y = get off the meth, or od or something, but shake it up sister! and praful – the chauvanism is a bit thick, and that’s coming from an indophile and i am one gora who isn’t there for the boys… well, not in an exploitative way.
india has lots of problems, but it is also one of the most fabulous places on earth, and one of the most spiritually exciting. of course you can have a bad trip, but its like acid, once you’re on, you cant get off, and if you have crap inside you, you have have a truly terrible trip. if you can’t let go, don’t go…
DEVIL INCARNATE
Some Westerners have a biased view of India. You can hardly find a place where people are happy in spite of being poor. And somebody said about people lying dead in the railway station..?? Well, I don’t know what you are talking about. But India doesn’t hide its poverty from outsiders,… something which China manages well. I don’t think Victorian England (which was almost as poor as current day India) could have been any happier. Anyways, if you can’t stand poverty, India is not the place to visit.
tallskin
Devil you say: ”
Some Westerners have a biased view of India. You can hardly find a place where people are happy in spite of being poor. And somebody said about people lying dead in the railway station..?? Well, I don’t know what you are talking about”
DOH, well, a dead body is a dead body, a girl of no more than 16, lying there, completely naked, in the forecourt of the railway station, with the indians simply stepping over her.
A few hours later (after wasting a futile time attempting to buy train tickets) her body was still lying there, untouched, now covered in flies.
What part of that don’t you understand???
do enlighten me.
Devil Incarnate
@ Tallskin:
I would like to talk to you about this. Can you tell me more details about where, when, how, and if possible, why this happened?? In fact, I don’t even understand why the girl died (the circumstances of her death)?? Was she run over by a train?? Did she die of starvation?? Was there a stampede?? Can you please answer my questions?? Why not email me direct at [email protected]
I will be able to say something only if you tell me more about this. Even though life in India obviously has a lower value than the rich West. But it is still difficult to believe Indians were stepping over a dead girl in a railway station. Indians are God-fearing people. Most Indians don’t even eat meat.
Many foreigners visit India. While some do complain that Indians try to fleece them by charging higher, some have complained that Indians have a habit of staring, some say Indians make sexual advances towards “goris”,… but what you are saying is unheard of. I have never heard of this or seen such a thing in my 21 years of being an Indian national.
Thanks.
Devil Incarnate
@ Tallskin :
Let me finally say that a majority of the foreign tourists who visit India, do like India. They hate the traffic, the roads, poverty, corruption and slow bureaucracy, etc. But they usually regard highly of Indian people, and they usually also like the food, the monuments, the bazaars, the rich culture, etc.
I would love to talk to you and know in detail why you didn’t like my country and its people. I am sorry for whatever you had to see.
PS: I am not joking, but it is possible that the girl you talk about might not be dead. She might have been sleeping (??). Many homeless people live their life in the railway stations. The police don’t evict them usually. And Indian railway stations are dirty. So that could explain the flies. I mean I have been totally surrounded by flies while being totally awake at some of the poorly maintained stations !!
tallskin
Mate, the girl was dead. I can only report what I saw and experienced.
///Let me finally say that a majority of the foreign tourists who visit India, do like India.
*****how on earth do you know this? What stats do you have to back it up? Some do, but a lot don’t. A lot of westerners can’t handle the endless barrage of begging on the streets and run screaming back to their hotel rooms never to emerge until it’s time to fly home.
//////They hate the traffic, the roads, poverty, corruption and slow bureaucracy, etc.
*****Oh yes, so true.
/////// But they usually regard highly of Indian people, and they usually also like the food, the monuments, the bazaars, the rich culture, etc.
****Not this westerner. I wasn’t looking for any “spiritual” meaning in India but merely viewed it as somewhere I felt I should visit. I went as a tourist. And I really hated being constantly poisoned, having the shits ALL THE FUCKING TIME. My friend suffered far worse than me.
Why don’t you people wash your hands after you go to the toilet???
Gael Losoya
So as an MIT student who recently interned in India this past summer . . . I must say I was completely captivated by the country, the culture, and the people. True, there are many faults in India regarding all sorts of things, just as there are EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. But by and large, my internship experience was a truly unforgettable and positive experience. There are many hardships, difficulties, and frustrations etc. that one must endure daily living in India . . . but these things must be tackled as they come and cannot be allowed to distort your perception of a diverse nation of 1.1 billion. India is definitely making progress and undergoing great change regarding its economy and society, and we must all be aware and appreciative of the very sincere efforts being made by some to fix India’s woes recognized not just by outsiders, but by Indians too. I will definitely return to live and work in India someday!
ANDY LEE
While there has been much progress made economically in India, the widespread corruption, and the rigid, hyper-conservative medieval social more of the place will prevent it from ever achieving a first world standard of living.
I was somewhat amused by the pride so many Indians felt about the growing power and influence of their country – how India was modernising and would surpass Europe/America/Oceania. “2020 vision – India to become a developed nation by 2020”. What a joke. Filth and rubbish on the streets of every Indian city I visited on my month-long trip. The sights and experiences I encountered appalled me.
Deformed beggar children wailing at my feet in Connaught Place while middle class Indians seem not to give a damn; the very same middle class Indians being served like Emperors by armies of slave-servants in their relatively modest homes. Caste-based arranged marriages where spouses often only meet days before weddings persisting across the country (banishment from the family the probable result from a refusal to go through with the marriage among BC/SC/STs – and this in a society which prides itself on family values); gay and bisexual people hidden from public view in a society bathed in hypocrisy and secrecy. Above the complete lack of waste management was horrendous – Delhi is the filthiest place I have ever seen.
The servants and drivers in ordinary homes particulary irked me.
Why can’t you do your own cleaning and cooking? Most middle class Westerners have to do it? (I actually know the answer here – middle class indians want development, but to keep the servants in their homes and continue paying them a pittance – Development for the middle class and continued servile poverty for the heaving masses).
Western affluence is built on the notion of individual freedom and initiative. Your society cannot even conceive what freedom actually is. Most Indian lives are spent living under a series of social commands – a slave mentality.
China may not have democracy, but for most Han Chinese, there is a hell of a lot more social/family freedom and actual creativity and innovation. Indians may rudiments of development in manufacturing etc, but they will never be free in their minds. They merely mimic Western business methods, but have no conception of innovation. If it’s not in a text book, if it hasn’t been done before in the West – nothing will happen.
I think Westerners can sleep soundly in their beds knowing our part of the world is still safely ascendant. If anyone is going to challenge this, it is the Chinese. And I say good luck to them – their society is ready for change and innovation.
getreal
5 years in prison for consensual sex between adults? Strike India off my list of places I want to visit. How do judges sleep at night after pronouncing sentences like this?
Indian
I want to say only one thing.. “we don’t care what you westners think of India. We love our motherland. If you don’t like india then its your problem, not ours. If you don’t want to come here then please don’t come. Nobody is going to invite you. May be we are not rich, developed or whatever but we are happy. We don’t need your help. You need not to worry about whether India is poor, corrupt or undeveloped..”
schlukitz
Snap. Snap. Snap.
So there!
Aryan
Its funny Andy LEE posts this. There are plenty of people who would beg in the streets of China given the chance. The fact is beggars make easy money, thats why they beg. Many of the crippled are unfortunately crippled by gangs in order to solicit more money.
But China has the worst human rights record on the planet. Each year, hundreds die from China’s over zealous ambitions, from chemical plant disasters to coal mine disasters. The media is totally censored (even Google!), and places like Shanghai and Beijing esp. during olympics had beated back the beggars and poor out of foreign sight – just because you sweep it under the bed doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Falong gong, Tibetans, you name it, China is the worst frking place on the planet and the biggest human rights violator.
As for Tallskin: exactly what railway station did you see dead bodies lying strewn? I call b.s. to that one! And it IS MUMBAI. Mumbai is derived from Mumbadevi a Hindu Goddess. The genius Brits could never pronounce it right so they called it that – and do to this Western bastardization, maps, books, etc. all went with it, even the Indians as they still had Anglo influence. And the reality of poverty in India is that the poor as they may be, they are still happy, optimistic people. If you’ve been to India you must have observed this on your own. That spirit and can-do attitude is something Western whatve a hard time achieving. Hence the poor in Western countries take to theft, robberies, kidnappings, murder, etc. to vent their frusturations. Others just abuse our welfare systems. The poor in India on the other hand, don’t point fingers, don’t have secret hatred for the ‘have’s’ They are poor and they know that and they try for the best. Amazing spirit, and you can’t put a value on that.