Meet India's first porn star

But the secret to Savita's popularity isn't so much her Pamela Anderson proportions as her roots in Indian culture. Complaining about a long digression featured in one episode, a user called Sex Drive explains, “The reason SB is so popular is because people fantasize about a sari clad bhabhi being so raunchy and sexually liberated. You take her out of the equation and the fantasy just ends there.”

Dr. Prakash Kothari, an eminent Bombay sexologist, explains. “Bhabhi means sister-in-law, or brother's wife. Most men are quite intimate with and take advice from their bhabhi. It's someone who's there to advise you, to help you, to make fun of you, to crack jokes, whom you can ask any intimate questions.”

And an object of sexual fantasy? In Indian culture, sex with your bhabhi isn't taboo on the order of Oedipus, the doc says, but it isn't kosher, either. “It's not welcome, it's not permitted, it's not accepted by society. Having advice from your own bhabhi is acceptable, but having sex with her is not.”

“[A] bhabhi is the Indian version of a MILF,” explained Deshmukh, who came up with the idea for the comic while boozing it up with fellow Indian exiles in the U.S. “Though in literal terms it means your “brother’s wife” — that is not the meaning here. For an Indian youngster his first fantasy is normally the newly married hot woman in the neighborhood who is referred to as a hot Bhabhi. Hence it seemed only natural that our hot heroine whom the entire neighborhood lusts after be called Savita Bhabhi.”

There's obviously a spoof factor here. But the slightly zany aspects of an impossibly curvaceous middle-class housewife slipping out of her sari for, say, a “special massage” from her servant boy doesn't account for Savita Bhabhi's massive following.

That lies in the cleverness of the comic's creators, who have tapped into current anxieties about the social changes brought about by modernity as well as nostalgia for past forms of printed entertainment.

“One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too,” Deshmukh said. “India is a country which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to have to come out first. We are already seeing that in a way, and hopefully SB will do her bit to help in this revolution.”

That repression — and the temptation to escape it — is a big part of the comic's appeal, explains sociologist Sanjay Srivastava, the author of "Passionate Modernity: Sexuality, Class and Consumption in India." “It plays upon a well-established male anxiety and desire — wanting and being scared of the modern woman,” he said. “It's good to have a modern woman as a girlfriend, but [as the serial cuckolding of Savi's husband illustrates] it's dangerous to have her as a wife.”

At the same time, though, Savita Bhabhi offers a bit of humor for the 30-something generation who grew up with the ubiquitous Amar Chitra Katha comics depicting tales from Hindu religious mythology. “[It] also borrows from that artwork,” says Srivastava. “So for some people some of the pleasure is that it's a kind of satire of those religious comic books.”

Nevertheless, not every bastion of tradition is unassailable, according to some fans.

“I am not able to log on to the website as it is banned in UAE,” writes Bhushan Ar. “I tried with proxy but no use ... kindly help guys, I am the newest fan of bhabhi.”

Read more GlobalPost dispatches by Jason Overdorf:

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