Days of the Raj Ch. 05

Sarah's Picture Book.

Sarah Maitland sat propped in bed under her mosquito net, a lamp shedding light on the outsize portfolio on her knee. Outside, night enclosed the Gangetic plain. India slept in moist heat. It was midnight.

The book was precious and she had an opportunity to bid for it through Sotheby's, although opposition was being posted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Expensive, but the story of this unique work of art was compelling. She would love it in her library.

Sir Elijah and Lady Impey had presided at Calcutta in the 1770s and 1780s where he had served as Chief Justice. She was young, he old and often travelling. Lady Impey had engaged gifted Indian artists. They had produced marvellous pencil, ink and water colour studies- of the Impey family, of domestic scenes, of their friends, of their garden menagerie or zoo.

One artist, Bhawani Das, was the most prolific. His paintings of cross-banded bats, black hooded oriels, spotbilled pelicans were masterpieces. Why not? The artist had made his name with Mughal rulers and the Raj had seen his value and recruited his talents.

Then, this one painting presents itself. It marked a tectonic shift. Opened a new universe. It had been painted in 1777. It was of a male fruit bat. With it, the artistic vision and that of his patron, young Lady Impey, somersaulted and took new direction.

A male fruit bat. Of all things.

The artist was acutely sensitive to the shape and texture of the great fruit bat, with the graceful curve of its ears and the soft furry body. One wing is stretched as if it were the cape of a Venetian opera house commendatore, ushering women into a performance of Handel or Vivaldi, rather than a creature in a colonial menagerie.

But what this stretched wing reveals is the revelation.

Nothing less than a splendidly highlighted genitalia. A downward pointing but hard penis shaft- black brown with pink glans- and two fat balls sticking out at the sides, symmetrical to a fault.

No animal has genitalia so alike those of the boys in this school, thought Sarah. Was it real? She hadn't seen the species. Or was Das, the artist, having a joke? Arousing his mistress?

From this portrait the paintings Das produces take a dramatic turn.

The next 187 pages in the brick-like portfolio are head to toe portraits of young Indian men of every ethnicity and social status. In none is the male wearing clothes- except in some cases headress or sandals. There are holy men or ascetics with their portable altars, labourers with lean muscles, sepoys with their colourful regimental uniforms not to be sighted, Purjaris with box hats and turbans emphasising their nudity, musicians naked and drums and flute held off to one side so as not to obscure any view, grooms holding the reins of carriage horses and a servant with black hair in a pony tail and carrying a gold and red embroided umbrella.

All stark naked.

In birthday suits.

Stripped bare to stand and face this artist.

The young men had every detail captured by the genius painter, from the fuzz on their cheeks to the gauzy hair on their scrotums, every wrinkle of a foreskin, the mottling of a glans, the veins that snaked a penis stem. The colour variation was subtle and his palate extensive. He had not hesitated to show the cocks in every state of extension or inflation including- oh, Sarah guessed- about 10 to 20 percent in states of total engorgement, seen in profile or full-on.

The same attention to detail Das had lavished on the lines of an Aroid leaf or Indian Bloodsucker lizard he expended on the nude male bodies. As gorgeously as he captured the Malaga's Giant Squirrel or Shawl Goat of Bhutan he as deftly captured the wrinkles of a frenulum or drape of a scrotum.

Thrillingly for Sarah many of the young males look abashed at this exposure. As if, perhaps, they knew it was headed for young Lady Impey and her circle. That English ladies they might meet the next day would have dilated on their nude forms.

The implications were...well, delightful.

And, Sarah thought, from the earliest years of British rule.

She would have liked to have known this young Lady Impey. So much they might have shared. So much. She reached out and turned off the lamp. The tropical night enclosed all. From under her pillow she produced her elephant tusk.

The Trials of George Applewhite.

"You can leave your clothes here," said Miss Plimmer, her gaunt features tight with excitement. "You will not be wearing them for the rest of the day."

Her voice expired with suppressed emotion. Seeing this young teacher in this condition was plainly thrilling.

Standing in front of her, already naked apart from his mortarboard, George Applewhite jolted. Nude? Not just for the lesson he was about to teach in front of girls but the rest of the day at school?

His erection firmed. It was a telltale stiffening. It revealed his subterranean desire.

Miss Plimmer, the principal's secretary, noticed. Her lips curled in a smile. She had thrilled to the sight of naked boys at this school. But he was the first teacher she had seen forced to present himself wearing only birthday suit, every inch of his 22 year old body exposed.

Beverly Burrowes, his fellow teacher, also looked down into George's groin, with her own prurient curiosity. She was becoming familiar with her colleague's petite cock. And more than that- she relished his shame at having to display it. George Applewhite nude- apart from that silly mortarboard! She loved to see him shiver and shake with shame.

She gestured towards the door and the three of them stepped out to walk down the corridor with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and, hanging on its walls, faded portraits of fat British royals and English pastoral scenes.

A sari-clad maid, on her knees washing the floor, looked up and took in the naked Englishman and the two dressed females. She noticed the young teacher's penis- his "linga"- was sticking up and out. George saw her look. Oh hell, thought George, I'm buck naked in front of a brown-skinned cleaning lady. And, worse, I'm hard as a board. With a Herculean effort he willed himself to avoid throwing his hands over his groin.

But he felt a kindling in his veins, a funny fluttering in his tummy. This Indian servant, old enough to be his mother, could see him in his birthday suit. And see him erect. And being escorted by dressed females. His humiliation was, he thought, awful...

...and delicious.

Then the cleaning lady in her sari, on her knees, broke into a mocking grin.

Her 19 year old boy had a longer linga, and broader too. She knew because after she had come to clean the floors of Sarah's school she had seen the naked punishment inflicted on young males. She had found that it was called murgha. So she had adopted it in her own home. And while her son didn't like it- a tall boy of 18, plain and shy and subject to teasing and taunts- his sisters certainly relished it, and all the village girls had taken to visiting their little hut by the river. She loved seeing her boy shivery and shamed, standing hands behind his back, with the girls gathered around. And loved the moment when his linga- wide and brown, with a bright red head- filled out and stood up.

The English trio walked past her. She turned to watch, scanning George's white bottom. Yes, she loved that view too, of her son. His tight bottom cheeks- his shabdkosh, his nitamb- only her boy's were nut brown. Delicious, this teacher's were a shameful white, clenching and unclenching as he walked away between the two ladies.

Miss Plimmer stopped.

"Goodness, I forgot Miss Maitland's belt!"

"Belt?"

"Sarah wants us- wants you- to lash him. In front of the girls. As part of his punishment."

Miss Plimmer turned and clacked back to the principal's office.

Beverly looked at her colleague, the nude and trembling George Applewhite under the mortarboard. Lash. She would have to lash him. On that bottom. Her "cunnie"- the word familiar from the Victorian literature- dampened. Her "mount of Venus" warmed. She beamed, he swallowed nervously.

She remembered something.

"The letter I put in your pocket?" she whispered

He nodded.

"It is a serious invitation. My friends...I mean, the girls I share the house with...would love you to have you home with us..."

George's erection throbbed.

"...for dinner..."

He nodded, eyes eager.

"...and for reading some books with us, funny literature..."

He had heard talk about the readings- from Sarah's collection of pornographers.

"...we could dress you up as one of our servant boys, for example...and for the night, treat you like one of them..."

His eyes lit up. He knew those servant boys were forced into tiny loin cloths. If they got stiff, the little cloth would be thrust aside, and their bottoms were completely uncovered anyway. The young female teachers, his colleagues, would see everything.

Jenny would see him, and Penny and Fanny and Hermione and Gloria and Helene.

They would see how small he was- smaller than many Indian boys they had sighted- and see him shamefully stiff, and witness his cleft bottom bare.

His erection released a big dollop of clear fluid.

Beverly saw it. She smiled. She looked him in the eyes. He looked away.

Miss Plimmer clattered back up the corridor, a thick, worn brown belt- an old army belt- folded, in her hand. George imagined the coarse leather lashing his rear. And...in front of the whole class. A class of giggling girls. In their uniforms. Pleated skirts, long socks, white blouses.

His mind swam.

Miss Plimmer swiped a view of his organ with the dollop dangling from the pink knob, and they started walking again. To the girls' classroom. The females on either side of George, and his stubby erection adorned with a bubble of fluid, pointing the way. My stiff cock, pointing the way, he thought and felt another tingle in his tummy.

Inside he was melting, with warm pleasure.

Then, swinging into the corridor, appeared one of the English girls. Olivia Crayfish had enrolled a month ago and was in a state of high excitement, never knowing when in the hallways she might encounter a fully nude golden skinned native boy. She left the classroom at every opportunity. Her eyes popped out of her head to see one of the male teachers...bare as a board...but with a ludicrous mortarboard...walking in her direction.

Their eyes locked.

He quickly moved his hands over his privates...then corrected the gesture.

He felt her eyes on him as she drew even.

He felt fresh waves of shame...

...a titillation...

...from head to toe.

She was so...dressed.

School rules insisted on it- and Sarah enforced them, right down to requiring the whitest and freshest gingham blouses with blue and white piping. And insisting their high-waisted, navy blue skirts were always to have the sharpest pleats- sharp as knifes- and reached their mid-calves. Long white socks shielded even an inch of leg from being viewed. Sashes decorated their waists and navy ribbons their hair. Of course, they were gloved. Outside, hatted.

This is how they were costumed when they encountered Indian males say- to take a vivid example- in the laboratories for the chemistry class. Here frequently the teacher, Mrs Favisham, made the male students strip off, more and more frequently, so when girls arrived they- the boys, that is- might already be standing nude, eyes downcast, at their benches with the test tubes and Bunsen burners. The girls clothed with white blouses, pleated skirts, long socks, ribbons and sashes; the boys- the same age, 18 or 19- bare as boards, shuddering with shame.

With what interest those schoolgirls- shy ones as much as the cheeky- espied the small details of the boys' bodies. These may include- and these are only examples among many fetching specifics- the bulge of a well-shaped glans under a foreskin. Or the decorative artery down a penis stem. And of course the funniest thing of all: the sprouting of erections from the boys' groins, one after the other. Up and out they sprang and clearly the boys had no control. How delicious this entertainment! How grateful the girls to be so fully clothed, how grateful for the double period that would afford them these...well, laboratory observations.

Boys' backsides as well. Some bare as eggs, some dusted with fine dark hair. Some skinny as goats', some shaped like cleft fruit. How amusing too that the boys were so discombobulated. Not amusing, it was positively exciting for dressed girls to see them so ill at ease. Again, quite titillating.

This, too, was how the girls were attired when they encountered boys standing nude in the corridors when they might view- from their fully clothed status-three boys stripped humiliatingly bare- standing against the wall. The cock on a nude boy might be completely reared and showing off an underbelly, testicle sac tightly pulled up. Or it might be pointing straight out, like an accusing finger. Or hanging limp, like a half filled sausage.

The point is that the females witnessing these ritualistic male humiliations were always immaculately attired.

But underneath, they tingled with the desires and curiosities that one might expect in healthy young Englishwomen deposited in the tropics.

Especially this morning.

Take Clara Covington. Now seated at her desk, she had spent much of last night giving her best friend, Felice Nadal, a description of that proud young Cyrus, who yesterday Clara had seen naked in the corridor.

Leaning together in the dormitory, she had stammered and groped for words to describe the sight she had come across outside Sarah's office- the proud 18 year old, shoulders like roof beams. Also the graceful line, in profile, of his flanks and bottom. She had gushed to Felice that the boy was naked...stark naked...without so much as "under things" or socks, which is to say as naked as one of those Greek statues in one of the art books that both girls had hunched over exploring, and she- me, poor, plain Clara, she seemed to imply- "could see everything."

The girls had stared at one another, wide eyed with lust.

Felice strained to say something. To ask the big question.

"Everything?"

"Yes."

Clara resolved to share every detail.

"His...his..." Clara started but stopped. She did not know what noun to enlist. "His thing..."

Felice had nodded, hungrily. Tell me, her eyes had demanded, tell me about that "thing."

"...was so...so..."

"Yes...yes," had panted Felice, eyes shining with desire behind her glasses, desperate for every detail of the handsome young man they had seen in cricket attire with a bulge tenting the flies.

"...his thing...was..."

Both girls had been damp in the crotches, fluid running down their ivory thighs.

"...so..."

"Yes? Yes?"

"So...manly!"

"Manly." The two girls had sunk into rich imaginings. "Manly."

Several girls at their desks that morning had nerve ends still rioting from a glimpse of Pedru Carvalho. Yes, only that morning, they had mounted the steps and turned down the corridor towards their class to catch a frontal view of him hands behind his back, and back to the wall. All his clothes had been removed and were nowhere in sight. Behind him hung an outsize reproduction of John Constable's landscape, The Hay Wain, making it look like the brown-skinned youth stood like s bronze statue by the River Stour, between Suffolk and Essex, naked outdoors- to be laughed at and teased by apple-cheeked milk maids.

Every inch of his chocolate skin was exposed- outsize nipples in tight chest hair, a decorative fuse from navel to pubic bush, long straddling...and, dazzlingly, a beam hard erection pointing at a 45 degree angle. It was so dark it was almost black, and roped with veins. An arrestingly red glans topped it, poking out boldly from its bunched cloak.

All he wore was a heavy pendant crucifix on gold chain. The gold plated cross lay in those frizzy chest curls. It accentuated his nudity.

It was the first time any of the three had seen him naked, this long lashed boy from devoted Catholic family in Goa. He had shuddered with shame and dropped his eyes. They had stared long and hard, and lubriciously. With big wolffish grins.

The gold crucifix made him look even more naked.

Eyes aimed at the floor boards he could feel their stares devouring him, like insects crawling over his skin. Especially over his cock.

Yes, they had stood in their pleated skirts and gingham blouses. They had stood staring, nudging one another but silent, just breathing hard. As if hypnotised. Eyes glazed with...what? Blazing curiosity? Bold teenage lust? A funny warmth at his awful, unimaginable humiliation? Their minds ran wild with fantasies- about how thrilling it would be to kiss and cuddle him, him clothesfree, them still dressed. Or how he might be adopted as personal servant, to be dressed only in tiny loin cloth. Or how he might be spanked like naughty but well loved son.

Each returned to the stout cylinder of flesh, straining up and out at 45 degrees.

Until the clatter of a teacher's heels had persuaded them to move off, reluctantly.

"What a lusty young man!" one of them had sighed as they walked to class.

The others had purred their agreement.

"Sooo...full-sinewed."

"And...well boned."

So they, too, had a fire in their veins, waiting for class to begin his morning.

The other girls? Some had tittered at rumours of the nude spankings delivered last night in one of the teacher bungalows to four of the male servants.

They had been incredulous.

"Not even those little cloths dangling in front? All their clothes off?"

"Spurted? Ejaculated? Not that, surely!"

"Yes- they did! Like champagne bottles popping!"

"Yes, boys just go off! Especially when spankings get them...well, excited!"

She was remembering those Manchester cousins, big boys too, pants at their ankles, their mother delivering furious slaps on bared nates. And the silvery projection! Goodness, when the jutting stem of the 18 year old released its trajectory, shooting across the room and splashing on a floral curtain. Her cousin was devastated, his mother incredulous.

"Miss Burrowes- she was with one of the servant boys! Sitting on top of him, his prick up her fanny!"

It was then that Miss Burrowes herself swung into the classroom and faced the restless girls.

She swallowed with nerves. Then, blurted.

"Mister Applewhite...your teacher...will very shortly come in for today's technical drawing and Miss Maitland has asked me to make sure you are very quiet today...and very respectful...because she herself has..."

Every girl was giving her undivided attention. What was going on?

"...punished Mister Applewhite...we should say Master Applewhite...punished him for challenging her authority...and, as a result, Master Applewhite will be teaching this lesson..."

She halted, lost.

The girls were bewildered.

"Just like one of the Indian boys would be punished..."

The class looked blank.

"...he will be..."

There was a clamour at the doorway and Miss Plimmer appeared dragging someone behind her.

"...deprived of his clothes!"

With a tug Miss Plimmer pulled the cowering naked young man across the threshold...

...to stand in front of the astonished class.

His expression was that of a circus performer fired from a cannon. He looked wild-eyed, frantic.

Nude, naked, in his birthday suit...except for the comedic touch: his absurd mortarboard.

Which only emphasised his clothes-feee state.

He clamped his hands over his groin.

The girls were shocked into silence. Then one by one, the more confident began to laugh...to point...to look at one another mouths agape and eyes wicked with delight. The more modest covered their mouths to register their incredulity.