Lo-lee-Ta: A Dubious Perversion for India

It was today (18th August) in the year 1958 that the US decided to give a professor’s perverted love a chance to be expressed – ‘Lolita’ was published after remaining banned for two years because of a suit filed in France against the paedophilic eroticism it portrayed.

Nabokov had decided to get the book published pseudonymously because of the content. It was termed ‘scandalous’ by those who had witnessed its general reception when it was originally published in 1955. In India, the ban only contributed to its popularity.

Now, after many years, it has maintained a strong foothold in literary circles and even got itself a place in the syllabus for MPhil in English of Delhi University, years after its advent. So is ‘Lolita’ really what it is perceived as?

Do Indians, in an atmosphere of perpetual audio visual stimulation, still feel interested in the intricacies of intense and poetic exploration of a middle-aged professor’s (Humbert) psyche when he starts obsessing sexually over his minor step-daughter (Dolores/Lolita)? 

I did a mini-survey of 20 urban literate professionals in Noida to find out what the consensus is. After a lot of gawking and a few interesting comments, we gauged the first reaction to the word Lolita which was, ‘never heard of it’.

For one young man it rang some bells, but it couldn’t make its way up to our expectations. We then approached two young women, of which, one seemed to recall that she heard about the novel during her college years and told us that it is centred on a ‘complex relationship’, though she didn’t know whose relation with whom.

Another young woman who had seen the movie said that she was unable to recall which version . She added that:

It is ‘still controversial’ as far as the Indian morality is concerned.

Another one claimed that she read the novel when she was 15 years old and she was able to relate with the protagonist, “It was scary!”. The narrative which followed described how much she was disturbed by the tragedy of the girl that she quit reading it in the middle of it and resorted to a Wikipedia summary instead.

Moving further, we encountered much more interesting opinions where one professional woman mentioned that she read it ten years ago and what annoyed her about the story was Hambert’s manipulation of Lolita for his personal thrills. An array of expressions of disgust was what followed.

One of the most interesting responses came from a well informed woman who opined: “There was a discussion held during my course in Media Studies, on the topic of portrayal of women in the media, often objectified. My professors mentioned Lolita in that context.”

A different perspective was shared by a young woman “I was interested in it because it was different. Feminism was coming up in the US during the that year and exploration of female sexuality, especially a young girl’s was interesting; but it is about the layers in the narrative not sex, but the distorted psychology.”

Then there was a working woman, a mother of two young girls, who questioned what would her daughters think about the novel now?

“I wouldn’t suggest them to read it”.

“I read it when I was unmarried and saw both the 1962 and 1997 movie versions made in Hollywood, not the Bollywood rendition titled Nishabd, which wasn’t well received as either and became controversial.”

Lolita may be critically acclaimed and listed as one of the greatest novels in English language, the reactions we received made it clear that Lolita is still a far cry from becoming a household name.

Now when India is getting more aware and expressive about its rights, sexuality still remains a taboo discussed in hushed tones and in abusive rants. Lines like these- “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul,” invite a torrent of horrifiying reactions because they were a testimony of an old man’s passion for a minor girl.

The question is whether love stories deemed acceptable would always require a clichéd plot? After the acknowledgement of various expressions of love and the right to love, how far has the love story of a Paedophillic man been accepted?