Savita Bhabhi and the desi Debonnaire

It's been six months since Savita Bhabhi - the sultry housewife who stars in a pornographic comic strip on the Internet - was born, but the creators remain incognito in a sign of the shame and legal stigma about sex in India. The website, managed by an obviously fictitious company called the Indian Porn Empire, is being dubbed India's first online pornographic comic book.It revels in sexcapades of a traditional Indian housewife. Her encounters embrace a range of characters, not least door-to-door salesmen, local cricketers and even a cousin visiting from the United States.
On Saturday, there were reports that the information and technology ministry may pull the plug on the website but its creators still remained silent. Savita Bhabhi's fan club is already legendary, running into several pages and its progress eagerly tracked by sections of the foreign press. But the website's 'administrators' appear reluctant to step out of the shadows and continue to use pseudonyms - Deshmukh, Dextar, Mad. Even the writers and illustrators provide no more than screen names like badman2k2in and gujju.man.
Patricia Oberoi, a sociologist with the Centre for Studies in Developing Societies, Delhi, says this secrecy "signifies that India wants to be truly globalised, even in this aspect. But the only reason America's Lary Flynt (so-called porn king) could be out in the open and these guys cannot is because porn is illegal in India. If an artist like MF Husain has five cases on his head, these guys know what moral police could do to them."
But Oberoi says: "To me, this is as if India, in spite of its coyness, has come of age - a woman initiates the action here, the porn is not crude but on the verge of sophistication, it's being translated into regional languages, which, till now had very rustic porn. I would say India has got its desi Debonnaire."
In an indicator of its undoubted success, the anonymous creators of the virtual porn strip now plan to expand. The website is currently asking for translators and script writers in other Indian languages as well.