New Delhi, Feb. 9 -- I finally bit the bullet and watched One Hundred Years of Solitude, which dropped on Netflix in December. Based on the Colombian master Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1967 novel, the series is divided into two parts, eight episodes each. The second part is due later this year.

I first read the book one summer vacation as a teenager, and a prissy one if I say so myself, ears turning red at the raunchiness with which the members of the Buendia family indulge their sexual appetite. No other classic in my memory has as much sex on its pages-consensual or otherwise-with both the men and the women consumed by it.

The Buendia men are creatures of lust and instinct, not governed by any taboo. Jose Arcadio, the patriarch, marries ...