Erika Lust talks about how porn, ethics, values are not mutually exclusive ideas

Erika Lust 

Born in Stockholm, Erika Lust is a Swedish feminist porn director, screenwriter and producer. Along with Anna Span and others. Lust has pioneered the field of feminist pornography across the world. 

Lust is a graduate in political science and feminist studies. She became interested in pornography during her days as a student at the University of Sweden; she also credits authors Linda Williams and Jean-Jacques Annaud as her inspirations. She has also written several books on the subject. 

Lust works out of her own production house called Lust Cinema. The production house is known for its diverse films, ethical standards of production, and is hugely popular with women and men worldwide. 

Apart from leading a Ted talk on the future of the porn industry, Lust won the Feminist Porn Award for Movie of the Year in 2012 for her film  Cabaret Desire 

It also won the Cinekink Audience Choice Award for Best Narrative Feature. The first two compilations of her XConfessions series have won her the Feminist Porn Awards for Hottest Straight Vignette in 2014 and 2015 respectively. She has also written several books on the subject. She lives and works in Barcelona. She sees “porn as a discourse about sexuality.” 

Lust is known for promoting fellow female artists and directors

Lust with her family

*Q&A with Erika Lust

How did you get started making pornographic films?

It was while studying political sciences and feminism at university in Sweden that I became interested in the link between feminism and porn. The book Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible by Linda Williams really opened my eyes to seeing porn as a discourse about sexuality, and it hugely influenced me and deepened my interest in porn as a genre and a tool for sexual liberation.

I then moved to Barcelona to study film. I made the short erotic film The Good Girl and put it online, and within a few months it had over  2 million views! I was thrilled to say the least! That's when I realized there was an audience for the kind of films I wanted to make and see myself, a real appetite for intelligent cinematic erotica! I knew I wanted to keep creating films and decided to start up my own production company, Lust Films, and it's now been ten years since I made The Good Girl!

What is different in your films the what one usually finds on the net?

Me and my team put a lot of work into script-writing, making sure the narratives and locations are captivating, that the performers are relatable and interesting... and they have to have real chemistry! 

There is so much that goes into my films apart from the sex... the buildup, seduction , anticipation, the aesthetic. Humans are sexually intelligent creatures and there are so many things that can excite our senses. As much as I want the sex to be exciting,  I also try to capture as many of those other things that make sex exciting too!

Also, with my project XConfessions, I get to know that people really fantasize about. On my website XConfessions.com, people from all over the world share their erotic fantasies and memories, and every month I pick two stories and turn them into erotic short films. It's an incredibly exciting and inclusive project. I get to make my audience's fantasies come to life! That's something that you won't see on a mainstream site. The stories that come in are so imaginative, each one is so different from the next!

Why do you think it's important to have female-centric porn when the stats say more men watch porn than women anyway?

Well, part of the answer is in your question, why do you think more men than women watch porn? Because most films out there are male-centered and cater to the male gaze only! It doesn't have to be that way though: alternative erotica offers more diversity, higher production standards and exciting narratives, that both women and men can enjoy!

How do you feel about the treatment of women in the porn industry?

In chauvinistic porn, the sad reality is that women are often taken advantage of, abused and forgotten when they have been "used" - not in all porn, but of course that horrible side is a reality as well. I want to have an alternative to that! There is no reason sex on film should all be done in a smutty, shady, exploitative manner - it can be done in a safe space, artistically, humane and with respect for everyone involved. It can be a truly positive thing if we choose to create films based on good values and with respect and love for our fellow human beings!

Lust at work

Sex can be fun, and so can its portryal 

What do you do in your films and company to counter the exploitation of women in the porn industry?

If you visit my page, you can see plenty of interviews with performers from my films. They are all different and everyone has their own, unique story about why they want to be in my films. You will see that they are all articulate and have thought long about their decisions and all have their individual reasons they want to work with us. Something that they all have in common is that they are all sex-positive and smart people, who all understand that sex is a beautiful thing and nothing to be ashamed of! I only work with people who share my values and understand the Lust ethos.

In India, we are debating whether porn increases violence against women. Do you agree that it could?

I think chauvinistic porn could have negative effects on society. I think porn is a discourse about sex and works like an educator about sex and gender  - so if a massive part of the cultural landscape, meaning traditional porn, is chauvinistic in its portrayal of women and embodies regressive ideas about women, sure those ideas are going to rub off when they are presented again and again: that's why it's important to have positive alternatives!

What do you think the industry and society could do to counter the false notion or real effect (as the case may be in your opinion) ?

First of all, I don't think chauvinistic porn is a sole cause for violence against women - because those films don't exist in a vacuum- They are based on a sexist ideology and part of a patriarchal structure. 

So just talking about porn isn't going to solve anything, we have to talk about everything, about women, about men, about gender, about sexuality, about double standards, about power. Talking is important, and once we start getting these important things out in the open, we can better understand why we have, for example, such a vast amount of porn that is hostile against women. Often people are just fed with images that they respond to without questioning where the ideas behind the pictures come from! 

I would love to see more female-led erotica. Like all other sectors of society that are striving for equality, sex on film should be an equal thing as well. Cultural categories concerning sex and sexuality need the ideas and decisions from women! 

Do you think female friendly porn is also important and appealing to men?

Often the category called "female-friendly" is often produced by men and is full of romantic clichés and terrible narratives. My films are different than those, and yes I know for sure that men love them! 

Over half our audience is male. Just because my films pay attention to the sexual needs and desires of women doesn't mean that men don't want to see them. That would be quite depressing if that was the case! Luckily it's exactly the opposite, and men like women, love to see erotic films with high production standards where the performers look engaged, pleasured and enjoying themselves for real. 

It's a myth that female-led erotica is just for women - my films are for everybody!

What's your favourite part of a porn film?

From my own erotic films: every part from initial idea all the way through the final product.

Which other directors and film makers would you recommend from the industry?

Ovidie, Tristan Taormino, Jennifer Lyon Bell and Vex Ashley from A Four Chambered Heart. I admire their innovation and creativity in erotic film a lot and they are really engaging in the new erotic movement that is going on at the moment!

Any message for young girls just starting to discover porn and experiment sexually?

I think sometimes as a woman, it can feel as if your sexuality has been hijacked - maybe by societies ideas about sex, social stigma, mainstream porn, unrealistic beauty standards, - it can be a lot of different things! To enjoy sex, you have to think about what you want, what desires and fantasies you want to entertain and what makes you happy, and also what doesn't make you happy.

It's good to know that all the images we see about sex are not necessarily true.

I think it's important to try to wash away the shame that it seems a lot of young women are still expected to feel about sex. Sex is meant to be pleasurable and fun! It's a natural thing after all. Whether you want to have sex or not have sex, you should be able to feel free to think about it, have it, and enjoy your sexuality in any way you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone else.

In your opinion, what will change in society, and in how men and women view sexuality, if and when the genre of porn changes and starts making content that respects women?

I'd love to see more alternative erotic film makers. I hope my films will inspire some to make their own films. Also, It's been great to see that more and more people understand the concept of feminism more in the last couple of years, where as before it was so vastly misunderstood in the public conversation. I think that is something that can help in conversations about porn and representations of men and women. Feminism is about equality of the sexes, men and women, working together for equal rights. When we can talk about sex and sexuality more openly we can start to make positive changes that can benefit all of society!

What do you think of the GoI's recent ban on porn sites?

I find it quite contradictory that such a country with a young population, and a sex positive history going back to B.C., would go so backwards in time by banning pornography. I think that sexual education, and -- why not-- porn education, is more vital and effective than censorship.

Banning these sites won't stop people viewing X-rated content, it will only fire their desire to go to other places to find it, , or use thing like Black VPN. Possibly alternative erotica sites and material that do further the cause of ethical treatment of women in the films and industry will not be reachable from India, because they are going to be put in the same box as the chauvinistic porn.

India needs to keep fighting for their right to sexual expression and exploration. Looking at old scriptures of your ancestors exploring their sexuality freely is legal, but tryung to find a modern depiction of sex is illegal. That's irony defined.

People in India are smart and opinionated. You have already started the debate, let's discuss porn instead of banning it.

*An edited  and shorter version of this interview appeared on the Hindustan Times website on August 4, 2015

Do unto others

A professor walks into a room and asks three questions. 

“How many people in this room have ever played games with a member of the fairer sex that you were attracted to?”

Every hand in the room goes up, albeit tentatively. 

Then he asks, “How many people in this room have ever been played by a member of the fairer sex that you were attracted to?”

The same hands remain suspended in the air. 

Having set everyone up, the professor asks his final question, “How many of you enjoyed the games played with you?” 

Everyone puts their hands down.

You’d think, being creatures of logic, we would be able to see the contradiction in that but lets be honest, we don’t. Even as some of you read this, you’re thinking ‘well, i like playing the game,’ or that ‘games are a part of courtship’ and my personal favourite, "the game is fun!" and you know what, perhaps you’re right. 

Perhaps we are so obsessed with the idea of competition, participation, showing the other person up, that we’ve turned life, into the greatest game of them all. The only question that remains- whose winning? 

I’m not going to give you the answer to that, because I’m not here to provide answers and more honestly, I don’t know. I’ll say this much though, if you’re winning, why do you feel like shit all the time? There’s a few of you out there who are thinking - ‘Well maybe you’re not playing the game as well as you think,’ and again, perhaps you’re right. 

Perhaps a few people out there, like me, are too stupid, too slow and downright retarded and so refuse to play the game because we don’t know how. Conversely could there be another lot out there, smarter than I, better than I, more agile than I, who can play the game, who would win if they played, and perhaps they don’t enter the field because they know - in love and in life, number one is the loneliest number to be. 

Now the something that interests me and I think everyone should think about, something the professor demonstrated quite well - everyone plays the game, which means everyone knows the rules, which in turn means, you know when those rules or the game is used on you and when you become the played and not the player, the same tricks you utilize are being turned against you.

So if everyone knows the rules of the game, why do we allow ourselves to fall prey to them? 

Again, I’m not here to give answers but I can offer some explanations, being able to see as all of us are really, the game from both ends of the spectrum. I’ve played and been played, more than I care to admit. 

Here’s something I’ve concluded, ‘been played’ isn’t the right terminology. No one can make you lose at a game that you’re not participating in, everyone knows this. So what is really going on in those times when you allow the other person to play games with you? and why, if you all know this, do you indulge it? 

Here’s what I came up with? The game doesn’t work on someone who doesn’t care about you - and similarly you do not play along with someone else’s game unless you care about them. This means, you can play games with a person who wants to be played but not with someone who doesn’t want to play. 

In the back of our minds, all of us know this but don’t admit it. I think this is because its a terrifying concept for most of us. The idea that we don’t have as much control as we think we do. The idea that we’re not being as cunning or as smart as we thought we were. The idea that it’s not the player whose in control, but the played. And really, that is how it is.

I’m not here however to tell you to take control of your lives, or get over the idiot whose making a fool of you. I’m not even here to tell you how you can turn it around in your favour. I’m here to say - there is no favour, there is no win, love and life aren’t about games, so stop playing them.

If everyone can further admit, despite what our egocentric minds lead us to believe, that we are not the centre of the universe, we are not the smartest people on earth, we are not the most desirable, not the kindest or the best or the brightest, you may learn to appreciate the ones who (and god knows why) do see the best, the brightest, the kindest sides of you. 

That’s what a played person is, someone who sees the good in you and therefore is willing to indulge the stupid, in order to get to it. To this person, you’re the ultimate prize to be had  in life’s giant Kinder Creme Egg, and you, with your games, your need to win the unwinnable, are simply disrespecting the one person (or maybe two, three if you’re lucky) who sees something good in you. 

This post isn’t gender specific, I think we’re too far evolved for that, or at least I hope so.  Neither does this post refer only to love between two consenting adults. It can’t possibly, because people play games in all walks of life. Be it with your lover, your friend, your parents, your siblings. The ones who enjoy the game do not discriminate between relationships or lives. 

However, if you’re a guy, the reference of Scarlett O’Hara might not resound in you as it will in most of the girls. If you’ve not read the book, you’ve watched the movie. At the very least, the image of a vivacious but vain green eyed schemer should flash in your mind. 

It’s a tragic tale about a self involved sweetheart whose games finally drove away the one man who loved her for everything she was (good and bad). A few of you may have read or watched it and tutted at the protagonist, ‘silly girl, played too many games with too little planning’ 

But read the novel again, watch a re-run on TNT, Rhett Butler’s parting words, later owned by Clark Gable hold the key to the entire (entirely too dramatic, drawn out to draw tears) novel - “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” 

It was not that he tired of her games, but that after a while, he stopped caring enough to play along and when that happens, when you use up all your nine lives with the ones who cared and they leave, do they ever come back? 

Another funny story about this book- Gone with the Wind. After its huge success, the author was asked to write a sequel, reuniting Scarlett with her lover, set things right (because didn’t all of us want him to stay and give a damn!). Here’s what she said while refusing the offer - “What’ll I call it? Back with the Breeze?”

So be gentle with those people who have been brave enough to give you their hearts and accept the darkness in yours. Be nice to those people who care about you enough to indulge in your silly game playing. Be kind to those who think you’re good enough to fall in love with. 

Because once they stop, and they leave, you may find out, albeit too late, that you miss them.

On people

I read a card the other day that said 'Sooner or later, everyone hurts you and that it is up to you to decide whose worth the pain'

The problem with this brand of Hallmark advice is that it is trying to reach out to such a large audience, that it forgets to be specific and ends up being vague and therefore, unhelpful. There's probably another card jumping to its rescue right about now saying, 'Well, hey its better to try  and fail rather than to never try at all.'

Without any criterion specified, how do we decide whose worth it? How do we decide who is our friend or predict which one of them will eventually hurt us? And how does one calculate if a person adds more value than they do, pain, in one's life?

When you're younger, these decisions are easy. In nursery school, you are friends with the first person who shares their goodies with you. In high school, your friend is the first person who smiles kindly your way. In university, it tends to be the person who likes the party in the same way as you do.

Then you cease to be young. I did not add 'one day' to the beginning of that sentence because that is like saying 'once upon a time'. There are no fairy tales, this is one of the things you learn in the painstaking process that is adulthood.

During this process, the same kid who shared his chocolates with you in kindergarten may have grown up with a desire to share more than you are willing. Is he still a friend, even if he no longer wants to be just so? The girl who smiled at you sweetly in school now tries her best to frown you down at every turn. Is she still a friend, even if she is not behaving like one at this time? If along the way, an enemy accidentally does you a good turn, is he your accidental friend?

Perhaps the easiest thing to do, would be to look at intentions. Then again, so many good intentions translate into ineffectual actions, one has to wonder if this system of rewarding intentions rather than results is really working to our benefit.

Still, perhaps we should assume the simplest path as Ockham did. If we were to do this, we would tell ourselves that the kindergarten friend knows everything about us and loves us. Then we would try and reciprocate. The frowns that are directed our way could be protective shields and we will hide behind them.

Then one may think,  what about love at first sight? or perhaps that we needed support at the time and not a shield. Picking your friends on the basis of what you need is a dangerous thing too. Just as we sometimes do not know why we do the things we do, we are not always the best judges of what we need either.

Which brings us back to - how do we know who to let in and who to keep out?

You know, the truth is , I don't know. What I've observed though is that you cannot control who enters your life or even the lives you stumble into. What's more, it seems to me that people cannot add or subtract value from your life. The only person who can bankrupt your life is you. I've never met an accurate accessor of the human spirit either. Whoever tells you that they can gauge the worth of a human being or encourages you to try to do the same thing, is lying.

People are unpredictable and usually so complex that their motives are hidden even from themselves. People will hurt you, love you, bring you pain and pleasure simultaneously, make you laugh till you cry, bruise you with their hugs and push you around with a kiss on your lips. Basically, people will bring you the broad spectrum of life, sealed and stamped right at your doorstep. There is no avoiding them.

This may perhaps be the best way to judge if a person is your friend- have they offered to or do they share a part of their experiences with you? Are they a part of your life? If the answer to these questions is Yes, then you must stop bucking, stop judging, stop examining and accept them as they come- because that is what friends are for.

and if the answer is Yes, then you must take deep breaths and remember the times that you inflicted on your friends, not so pretty parts of yourself. If you're really a friend - and you have to be one to have one - you will not tally the times against each other.

I think what I've concluded is that: people being people and life being life, one can not control either or bog them down with our individual expectations. One must simply allow each to run the course that they are. For the days that this current runs rough or inexplicably against you, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the support you receive, from unexpected sources.

The Green Thumb

I’m not one of those people who have green thumbs, so when my husband gave me the plant, I was baffled by the strange choice of benefaction. I can understand flowers, who are both immediately appealing to the senses and can be put into a vase and ignored, till they die and need to be thrown out. We had been married five years now and not once had I shown the slightest interest in gardening of any kind. 


“It’ll be good for you” he said when I expressed my reluctance to take responsibility for it. I realized then that he was compensating. I had had a miscarriage the year before and we had been trying for more children since but, without success. “Do you think that some strange looking plant will make up for the empty second room in our apartment?” I asked him, trying to understand the logic behind his move. 


Oblivious to how he had just humiliated me, “Perhaps if you’re good with this plant, we can turn that room into a nursery for plants darling, it’s gets great sun light, why not make the best of it?” he replied. I was furious and in my rage, I ignored the plant.

For a long while, almost a week I think, the plant just sat there in our living room, in it’s earthen pot. Occupying space in my life but not filling up any gaps. I didn’t want to let it and my husband simply didn’t understand that rather than a present, he was handing me an everyday reminder of my humiliation. “it feels like you’re  mocking me,” I told to him. “A woman unable to bear children taking care of vegetation instead!” He tried to convince me different, but I wasn’t going to listen. “You could just as well get me a cat and make me the neighborhood cat lady!” I fumed, “At the very least, you know I like cats, what do I care about this plant?!”

He told me I was being dramatic and perhaps I was, but my feelings of ignominy were familiar and the plant, an alien. I refused to water it and ordered him to let it die as well. It didn’t make up for losing the baby, I explained to him. In fact, it made me feel like there was no hope. I didn’t need this runners’ up medal, I was still in the race. My husband is sometimes a kind man, he empathized or, more likely, simply, allowed me my self pity. Either way, I know he didn’t water the plant and we went about the week, waiting for it to wilt, like someone watches an old relative on life support. 


It made me think of my first ultra sound, when I saw my baby for the first time. I remember marking down days in the calender, waiting for it to be born. This was just the opposite, but I guess, the same spectrum. Life and Death are two heads of the same coin aren’t they?

After a week or so, I began to notice something strange. The plant was as healthy as ever. Its leaves were green bright green, they even looked brightly polished, as if someone was giving them a regular washing everyday. I inspected the soil and it got even stranger - the soil was dry and cracked, there was no way that it had been fed any water recently.  “How is this possible plant?” I found myself asking it. 


I suppose I knew its secret was safe, not like it was going to give me any answers. Perhaps it was a desert plant and had hidden stores of water I concluded. I watched for another week, I watched both my husband and the plant. I tried to ascertain if he was sneaking it contraband liquids behind my back, but it didn’t seem so. God Bless his soul, the man was obedient. The plant was being fed by no one. Yet, week two, there it was, greener than ever, healthy as a new born. 

Week three, I began to have nightmares about the plant in our living room. I would dream that it was supernatural and had powers that could at times, bring me great fertility and I had eleven babies. Other times I would dream that the plant grew arms and legs and came at me to take revenge for starving it like I was now. Not that it looked starved. It actually grew healthier and bigger in the three weeks that it had been in my home on my self approved diet. “How are you doing so well plant?” I asked it again. It was impossible, but it was true. 

After a while, it became evident to me that the plant had no intention of making an exit from our lives and I gave up ignoring its presence. I didn’t say anything to my husband about the strange behavior, or my dreams. I didn’t tell him that occasionally I went to our living room and asked the plant its secret. He had already been through enough, handling me after I lost the baby and I didn’t want to give him more reasons to worry about me. 


By now, the plant seemed like it had always been a part of our lives, like some uncle who came for a week and stayed with you till he was fat and old. By week three, I began to get curious, so I asked my husband what kind of plant it was and where he got it from.

It turns out he knew less about plants than me even. He had no idea what it was and he said a researcher in the laboratory of where he worked gave it to him as a present. He said  it was for you, that it might cheer you up. It bothered me that a researcher in a lab somewhere knew that I was depressed. It bothered me more not to know anything about this strange green thing that was sharing my space with me. 


Since he had no answers for me and the researcher had since, left my husband’s company, I decided to embark upon my own fact finding spree. I took an image of the plant, by now it was at least two feet high with triangle neon green leaves. I could tell that it had plans to flower soon enough, but it was not possible to see what the yield would be. I took the picture to every botanical garden in the city. There were only two, so after that I hit the nurseries and after that, I turned to the libraries. No one knew what the plant was. One botanist told me to bring it in so that he could record it, he said he had never seen the species before. I left his office and never came back. His curiosity was so objective and cold that it made me want to protect the plant from his probing.

I myself was curious now. A plant that no one knew, in my living room, surviving seemingly without water. Who knew. The researcher had to know, so I begged my husband to trace him and let me speak with him. I reasoned that I could not be expected to take care of the plant if I did not know anything about it. Also, if something were to happen to it now or under my care, if I did something wrong, I would be devastated. He was a kind man, like I said, so he did his best to trace the researcher down. Again, with no success. The man had moved bag and baggage to the beaches of India and did not wish to be found. Finding someone is like saving someone, you can’t do it without their co-operation. So the origins of the plant remained a mystery. Still, a plant is a plant is a plant, reasoned my husband and told me to care for it, like I would any other plant.

Therein lay the problem didn’t it? I had ignored it and allowed it to flourish on it’s own for the first few weeks, and flourish it did. Had it died then, I would have cared a little but not really. I had not invested anything into it and expected nothing from it. The only thing that would happen is that the touch of color in my living room would be somewhat diminished, Nothing a few throw away cushions and a decent painting couldn’t have fixed. Now, I cared about it. I wanted it to live and I wanted to nourish it, but i didn’t know how. What should i do , I wondered.

I spoke to several friends, who had green thumbs. I went to them for advice, I let them come over and see the plant. They were all in awe. They had never seen such life before and none of them believed me when I said I had not watered it since it had entered my home. What a bad host I must seem like!

Everyone had a different take on the origins of the plant. Some said that the wide leaves indicated that it wasn’t a desert plant like me and my husband suspected and that it did indeed require water. Perhaps I got lucky this time around but I shouldn’t take these risks with such rare and exotics plants. After all, no one knew where it came from and whether there were any others like it. I must water it everyday, twice a day at least, I was told, though it felt more like I was being chastised. 


There were still others who said that I should simply let the plant be and that it would indicate to me when it required feeding. Such people are also the same people who think that children should not be punished for pushing their dinners under the table or that welfare and unemployment benefits are the cornerstones of a truly enlightened society. These people more often than not, are also against the death penalty, they consider it, along with war, to be a kind of residue from the time when we had no choice but to be barbaric. It’s usually hard to listen to these people, certainly most people don’t, My husband calls these friends of mine various names, bums, hippies, flower children, he says all these words, even the last one - which actually sounds beautiful to me - as if with a bitter taste in his mouth. Like the words are sour lemons. 

He told me not to listen to them, not that I was going to anyway. People with concrete advice, people who tell you what to do and how to do it, right down to the letter. Those are the people that others want to listen to. If Moses had gone to God for advice and God had told him, “To do as his heart desires”, there may have been no parting of the Red Sea. Moses may simply have run away with the beautiful young slave that he loved and they may have produced beautiful slave babies somewhere far away from the eyes of the Egyptians. There would be no ten commandments. No one would have told millions what to do. Almost unacceptable, that is. My point being, it’s easier to be spoon fed, to be told what to do, easier to follow instructions than to create your own recipe. So I followed directions. 

I took down a lot of notes from the friends who were willing to give. There was no shortage, let me tell you. Everyone has an opinion, especially when there is no way to verify them. I began to water the plant, twice a day, large quantities of water. “You’ll do really well now won’t you plant?” I’d say to it while turning the soil, “Now it’s you and me, we’re in this together and we have all the instructions on how to take care of you.” I was convinced, now that I had started to care for it, pay attention to its life, want it to live, the plant wouldn’t let me down. After all, it had survived my indifference, how could it not flourish with my love? Still, it always seemed like the plant was just at the edge of spitting out a beautiful flower for all to see, but it didn’t happened. 

One day, a group of friends brought over a botanist. He was a well respected man in his field. Immediately, there was something about him that I did not like. Perhaps it was his air of self approved superiority or perhaps it was the fact that he kept comparing my plant to other plants he had seen along his lifetime of plant hunting. “It’s leaves are like that of a Mulas tree, yet the color resembles Ambrosia trifida and the smell. well it smells like the Rudbeckia hirta.” This is what he had said. I admit that if he had simply said apple, weed and daisy to me instead, I may have been able to reconsider my dislike. Now I couldn’t.

Still he was the expert, so he left me with a great many things to help the flower bloom. He gave me the names of some fertilizer, some plant proteins, various other things he told me about. When he left, one of the friends who was a hippy or a bum or a flower child like my husband would spit out, stayed back. When it was just him and me, he asked me “Why are you so interested in keeping the plant alive now? I thought you didn’t care...”  I was taken aback by the question, not in the least because out loud it just sounds terrible doesn’t it? Not wanting to care for a living thing? Not wanting to nourish a gift that has been given to you? 


Yes, it sounds terrible, perhaps selfish but most of all, it sounds entitled. Like one has a choice about what to do with gifts that are given to you. Truth is, you don’t. You should simply accept whatever is given to you in life and do your best to make it beautiful. 

That’s what I had come to believe I told him and that is why I now want the plant to live. I had neglected it initially, that’s true. Taken it’s ever growing foliage for granted, but that was no more. I was ready to be good to it, take care of it. I was ready to give it more than the little space in my living room. It sounds cheesy and perhaps a bit much considering that it’s just a plant, but now I wanted to give it a bit of room in my life. It was empty after all and anyway, wouldn’t this be just the right thing to fill up those spaces?

My friend seemed dissatisfied with my answer. It was almost as if he thought I was lying. “If you want the plant to live and accept it for what it is, why wouldn’t you pay attention to it’s nature, how it’s behaved so far?” he asked, “Why would you try to listen to people who don’t know what it is and follow their paths.... after all, your plant, it’s not theirs and what do they know?”

He was correct, but then I reasoned, what did I know. I had never had a green thumb you know. I had never kept a plant before, my mother did not have a green thumb, neither my father. I had heard that plants actually died when my grand father came within their vicinity. No, I told him, I couldn’t risk his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach to life. I needed a plan, a schedule, I needed a routine with the plant. Something I could follow, without blame, reproach, without responsibility almost. 

I bought all the fertilizers and plant food that the doctor recommended to me. Each day I would water the plant, plant food mixed in and turn the soil every week like I was told. Every day to pass the time while I went through this extensive routine, I’d speak to the plant. I’d discuss my day, or my marriage. 


I shared with it the fear that my husband was having a secret affair. I shared with it the fear that my husband may not entirely understand me, or that we had married too young, more for fear of loneliness than for love. Married because it had seemed to be the correct thing to do, because it was our age, because it was how things are done. I told the plant about my unborn baby, how happy and how sad it made me to think about it. I asked the plant if it ever wanted to have babies of its own... I asked it, because I knew plants reproduce but can they have babies? 


The plant grew even bigger, until it was almost as tall as me. I took this as a sign of success, as a triumph of order over anarchy, of structure over creativity and I was elated. It’s a lot easier to believe that the world has roads ready made to follow than to think that every life has to pave its own way.

After a few weeks, when it was evident that the plant was not responding badly to the botanist’s suggestions, I invited my friend over for dinner. I wanted him to see the produce of my labour. I told him I had followed everything to the T and that the plant continued to be healthy, happy and well nourished. “But has it flowered?” he asked, only half smiling. I had to admit, sadly, it had not flowered yet.

“Perhaps we should try and experiment?” he suggested. I was immediately suspicious and told him that I didn’t want to experiment with a living creature. That’s just not right you know, I told him, subjecting a life to standards just for my pleasure or curiosity. “But,” he reasoned “No one knows of any other plant like yours, so you don’t know whether what the botanist and all the other people said is a hundred percent correct, now do you?” I nodded, you can’t always argue with reason, you can try but more often than not, it corners you up against it’s hard wall and there you are. “So in a way, it’s that also an experiment?”

I suppose he was correct, but it didn’t feel correct somehow. Perhaps it didn’t feel like an experiment because the botanist hadn’t said apples, he had said Mulas, perhaps it didn’t seem like an experiment because they were telling me what every plant they know responds to. My plant was after all, like my husband said, a plant. Hardly an experiment to try to make it grow in the same way as all the other plants. It was more like following the road already travelled. I told him this, I think it offended him a little, but he was a follower of the forgiveness philosophy and he did not take it much to heart.

He dropped the topic however, much to my relief and I continued to follow the advice of the confident sounding, all-knowing crowd. The conformists, the majority. 


These are the people who believe that the grading systems in schools is the only way to measure aptitude, these are the people who believe a philosophy degree means that you are wasting your life and becoming a bum, these are the people who took down Woodstock, LSD, Jimmy Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, Bobby Kennedy, Joan of Arc, endorsed British Rule in India even though they themselves were not English. They come at different times, with different faces, but these are the people and everyone, no matter how well they know themselves, eventually follow these people and so did I.

After a few weeks, the botanist came back. This time he dropped by without any warning and when he arrived, I was sitting with the plant, telling it about my day. When he saw what I was doing, the botanist laughed. “You’re plant doesn’t care that the chocolate soufflé didn’t rise, you know?” he said to me, only in half jest. The other half was made up of pure contempt. Perhaps at my naivety, perhaps because I was so lonely that I was talking to a plant, or perhaps simply because he felt superior to me who was, obviously slightly crazy. 


Whatever the reason was, it made me feel small. Literally under his superior gaze, I felt like I could have fit in the palm of his hand, and that he would then almost certainly squish me like a bug. He wasn’t the kind of person who would open a window and let me out into garden. No, definitely not.

“A friend told me that plants like it better when you talk to them.” I told him. After all, it wasn’t just his advice that I could follow, though I didn’t say it with the largest degree of confidence. I regret that now. I should have said it like it was the gospel, because what he said after wards, sounded like it should have been part of that indeed.

“Plants are just plants, my dear. You’re being silly. It’s alive, but it doesn’t have language, it doesn’t have a direction, a purpose, it doesn’t understand anything you’re saying to it. It’s simply an inert but living creature. You’re wasting your time indulging it like this, talking to it... whoever believed such a thing!” 


His words stung and while they were hurting me so, I couldn’t help notice that he looked a bit like a squid or a jelly fish. All floppy around the edges. I didn’t think too much of it then, perhaps I only thought about jelly fish because it’s the same kind of stinging pain when one attacks you. It, like the botanist, perhaps doesn’t mean to but is simply protecting its territory. After all, if the whole world starts having an opinion about plants and how they should be treated, his speciality would be the norm wouldn’t it?

I feel like a coward now, but I didn’t argue with him. I let him tell me what to do, I listened without questioning and ignored my desire to talk to my plant. That I think was my greatest mistake. The truth was, no one had told me to talk to the plant, I had started doing so on my own accord. Till the very last day that I stopped, it had felt like the right thing to do. In fact, it was the only thing that I had done with the plant, that was my own. 

I shouldn’t have stopped. Or perhaps it didn’t make a difference, but it cannot be denied that a week after my silence began, my plant began to ail. Initially I did not make the connection, even now I suppose I can’t really say it was definitely the connection, but like the talking, it feels right.

I almost went crazy when the plant’s leaves began to fade. Their luminous green colour which used to almost glow in the dark, now became a deep dark green till it was almost black and then one by one, its thick foliage began to thin. I watched the plant night and day. I cried every time a leaf died. 


I told my husband one night that it felt as if a part of me died with every part of the plant. He didn’t say anything, he wiped away my tears but he did not bring me close into his arms. I was so distraught with grief for my vegetative ward that I did not notice the distance between my husband and myself. I busied myself in following the routine, I watered twice a day, I changed the fertilizer, the soil, I sprayed it with plant proteins. I did everything in the book. 

Eventually, despite everything, one day, the last leaf fell off the plant and on that day, my husband took me in his arms. I wasn’t crying though. I couldn’t cry. I was too confused. I wanted answers. I had done everything that they had asked me to.

I phoned the botanist and told him what had happened. I had expected sympathy, I had expected regret. I had expected too much. “Well madam, you obviously didn’t follow the instructions I gave you properly, otherwise it would not have died.” was all I got from him. “No!” I assured him, “I did everything you said, I watered it twice a day, I stopped talking to it, I used the plant proteins...so how did this happen.” We argued for a long time, he refused to give me any release, he refused to believe that I had not digressed at any point. He had issued the standard instructions, they had not worked, hence they were not followed.


“It’s not possible madam, you have obviously left something out, it’s simply impossible that you followed the instructions I gave you and the plant died. They are basic, any plant would only have flourished.”  This was what he knew. 

“What if....” I told my husband later, “What if my friend was right?” 


He was confused, he did not know which friend I was talking about, so many had come over and so many had given their two cents contributions to the plant raising guide. “My friend who said we should just let it be, my friend who said the botanist was wrong, what if he was right...” I was obsessed now, I had to find some reason that the plant died and it couldn’t be because of me. “What if I just don’t have the green thumb?” I asked him. 

My husband looked up from the book he was reading and smiled, “Look darling, a plant is a plant is a plant, sometimes they live and bloom for a while, and sometimes they die, it happens, they’re all the same. There’s nothing that you could have done...”

He made me lie down next to him in the bed and cradled my confused body close to his. I wanted to feel comfort but I couldn’t, so I asked him “Is this how you comfort your girlfriend when she’s upset...?” He was taken aback but he did not try to deny it. 


Instead he said, “This is how I comforted my mother after my father died, I sat with her for ages after he was cremated and held her. She cried for a long time then, but I think my holding her made her feel better. Doesn’t it make you feel better?” he asked and I thought, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t because he thought ‘A woman is a woman is a woman....’