By Yamini Zerfas
1) A hastily written brochure for an island holiday
2) A character in a colonial novel possibly featuring an evangelist in the South Seas
3) Discounted cruise ship offer ads
4) Food show hosts who think garlic is spicy
5) Erotic fiction that could be improved with a little help from Wikipedia
6) Travel writing inspired by the Hangover films
7) Wildlife that do not live in areas serviced by CNN or McDonalds.
If you were asked to think of a word commonly used by, abused by or deployed to describe any of the items on this list, chances are that you are likely to be accosted by that pet peeve of all content writers and orientalist scholars: exotic. There’s no easier way to reduce the deep and complex varieties of food, greenery, creatures, cultural practices, human bodies and their experiences than to shove them happily into that category of the magical other. You may as well take off your solar topi and mop your face with an initialled handkerchief while I pour you a gin and tonic.
While we may only attempt (in many amusing ways) to recreate the creative sessions that generated the idea, any which way that “exotic” found its way into Priyanka Chopra’s latest musical tribute to mid noughties divadom is probably tragic. Thesaurus fail? It may come as a surprise to her producers, but female desire has been around long enough to refuse that tired label (in many militant ways), even if bestselling authors of erotic fiction insist on deploying it to counter their own discomfort with describing lady parts. A respectable upbringing can be a terrible thing.
The oracle will tell you exotic could mean strange, foreign, glamorous, bizarre, unworldly, mysterious or unusual and will use it in a sentence to describe fruit or performers at pre-nuptial celebrations. You’re free to draw your own conclusions on why PC or her producers felt it necessary to use that word in her song. Funnily enough, given how female desire has featured in desi pop culture, it may be safe to declare that if this usage was indeed incidental, it could not have been more revealing.
Dear Priyanka Chopra, the tropics don’t need cooling. If you want to be a pineapple, be a zombie pineapple that takes over an unfortunately titled resort.
Yamini Zerfas is a 25 year old freelance writer and farmer