Sex before liberalization, economic and otherwise...

“Around 95% of the girls and 100% of the boys in Delhi lose their virginity in college”, announced a young team member confidently during the lunch time.

As the team manager, I overhear a lot of things from the younger folks and often pitch in with my comments as well, and this was an issue I had my views on so I asked,

“Tujhe kaise pata? How do you know?” I asked. 

“Pata chal jaata hai sirjee. If you are social and have a large circle of friends, you come to know eventually, about everyone.” 

Times have changed I thought, even though our health minister is against sex education, young girls and boys are pretty educated themselves, it seems. Post lunch while taking a walk around the company campus, I went into flashback, as to how sex was perceived when I was a kid and growing up in a small city in India.

It was during the late 1980s, I was around eight or nine. The greatest invention of those times, the Television, was making inroads into Indian homes and my dad also eventually saved enough to get one of those bulky CRT sets with shutters. It cost Rs. 4000 I remember.

We had some guests that day, so we all were sitting in the drawing room of our quarter in the defense estate we used to stay in, in Jabalpur. The lights went off, parents were still talking about daily mundane occurrences and the kids were running around the drawing room playfully.  

Suddenly the Television screeched loudly in Hindi, “Mala D, garbh nirodhak goliyan, mahilaon ke liye, Condom purushon ke liye!” Everyone stopped talking and realized that the lights were back.

 (In English the statement meant, “Use Mala D, contraceptive pills for women and condoms for men.” The ad was meant for population control.)

My mom looked at me sternly and ordered in Bengali, “Bhetore jao, go inside.” As if I had aired the Mala D ad on TV and probably consumed a few! I went into the bedroom thinking which of these words, “Mala D”, “Condom”, “Garbh” was the culprit.

This reaction from mom was not new though. Whenever Amitabh Bachhan or Rajesh Khanna came close to the lips of the heroine, or Shakti Kapoor or Ranjit struggled with the saree of a female, mom used to order us to go inside the bedroom.

Although before the heroes could really kiss, the director preferred to show two flowers doing foreplay in the rain and then out of nowhere the heroine used to have a baby. Shakti Kapoor always used to get beaten up black and blue, after pulling at the saree for 15 minutes. The hero used to break in through the door in a way that would put CID’s Daya to shame.

However these were scenes that mom used to think would spoil us and transform her good sons into bad boys and perverts.

“Baba sex mane kee?” I asked my father one day, as he looked at me in disbelief.

 But he tried his best. “Sex means, gender you know? Cow and Ox, Gander and Geese, Hen and Cock. Male and Female there are two sexes.”

“But why is it considered bad?” I counter questioned.

“Who said it is bad? Sex is good.” Baba concluded and left the room.

Well I agree now! ;) 

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It was in 5^th standard I remember, that a friend told me in school, “You know sex is the reason why kids are born. You have that one inside the pant you know from where we piss?”

I asked, “What?”

“Abey yaar jisse susu karte hain.” He clarified. I looked at him wide-eyed in disbelief.

He continued, “Girls do not have that, they have something different, I do not know exactly, but one of elder cousins told me. Then you put that inside the girl and the baby happens, everyone is born like that!”

“What!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean everyone is born like that, me too?”

“Yes yes dost” he was excited as he broke the secret, “Even your mom and dad did the same for you.”

“How dare you say such filthy things about my parents?” I said angrily and left the place before the poor guy could explain.

In the evening the gang from our defense estate got our heads together and we decided that this particular guy was an unscrupulous pervert and we needed to boycott him completely. For the next couple of years, this guy, who first told the biggest secret of life was completely ignored not only by me, but by my entire gang.

It was not a Biology lesson, but a humble Moral Science book, in the 7^th seventh standard that cleared the suspense. It clearly stated, “The male penis is inserted into the female vagina, sperm cells are released which fuse the female egg and kids are born!”

Bingo, so the pervert was right. I went up to him and apologized for castigating him, while he should have been felicitated for being the “first mover”. Pun Intended.  

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From the 8^th standard onwards, the learning curve on matters of sex was exponential for our entire group. Chastity, Debonair and the Sun magazines replaced Archies, Superman, Chacha Chaudhary and Billoo magazines. In those days Youtube, Whatsapp and the internet was unheard of, so the seminude models in these magazines came to our rescue.

Hiding these magazines in inexorable places in cupboards and under the pillows was a tough task indeed. One of my friends from the gang, Monty, got caught with some Debonair magazines in his schoolbag. The teacher caned him and made him stand outside the class. However he read the entire magazine himself in the staff room, excusing himself from the class.

The favourite section of another friend from the gang was not the pictures, but the Q&A in these magazines. “I had sex with my girlfriend and she is pregnant, what should I do now?” and so on. His passion was to read these out loudly in the cricket field after the match and then provide extremely innovative solutions, that are beyond the scope of this piece of writing!

It was from the cricket field that we were returning one day, when we saw a crowd around one of quarters near the cricket field. Nisha, a 10^th standard girl in the building had an affair with a boy from outside the estate. He often used to come and meet her at the terrace of the building.

One day a strict Bengali uncle saw them together. Those were the days where people considered neighbours’s kids as their own and no one in and around 100 square kilometers was supposed to have an affair. So the Bengali uncle tried to catch hold of the guy, who ran away pushing him aside.

He raised an alarm for a thief shouting “chor chor”. The guy escaped anyway, but the inmates of the entire building had gathered, much to the embarrassment of the girl and her family.

When our gang reached the “crime spot” the Bengali uncle was standing like Ajay Devgan of Singham and explaining why shouting “Chor Chor” was important to gather the crowd and maintain the culture and decency of the defense estate. 

I asked, “What has happened here, Kaku ekhane kee hoyechhe?” 

“No no, you are kids, you need not know” He spoke without looking at us. 

I asked again, “Tell us, what happened here?” 

“No no” he said again. 

I persevered, “Bolo na kaku ekhane kee hochhilo?” 

“Ekhaane laaaaabh hochhilo” he responded loudly with wide open eyes, pronouncing the 4 letter word in a distinct Bengali accent. “Love was happening out here!” 

Now “laabh” in Bengali as in Hindi, means profit or gain. 

So the mischievous Lucky asked, “Kisher laabh? What gain was happening here” 

“Laabh na, Laaaaabh…L-O-V-E laaabh, like it happens in the movies!” the uncle could not hold his anger back. So he probably meant, love was meant only for the movies.

That day onwards the family faced some social stigma for this incident. They quietly moved to another part of the city and we never saw them again. 

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Movies were not so readily available for viewing those days. People were dependent on the humble Doordarshan for their weekly dose and unless one was a movie connoisseur, one would rarely watch a new movie in a cinema hall.

However we in the estate were luckier. We had a Club where most of blockbusters would be screened in around four to five months from their release. And at times they aired English movies too.  

One of progressive club members of those times, dared to screen a movie that had quite a few scenes with frontal nudity and sex. The kids watched the afternoon show after school. The parents were angry. However all of them watched the evening show and then complained to the Club members that such movies were spoiling their children.

The Club never aired another movie like that again. However our gang was very happy that we were able to watch the movie and that was the point of discussion for a few weeks.  

Lucky had missed that one, so it was the goal of his life to watch an adult movie. Since that was not happening anytime soon, he used to imagine that he was watching an adult movie each time he went to watch one.

He went for the afternoon show of Agnisakhshi and then came running onto the cricket field in the evening and said, “Manisha Koirala ne sab dikha diya!”. I was never very hopeful of Hindi movies, given my experience with Rajesh Khanna’s kisses and Shakti Kapoor, but we all went with lots of expectations for the evening show at 8 PM.  

Obviously we were disappointed and we took on Lucky the next morning in school.  

“Kya dikhaya be? There was nothing!” I said.

“Ok where were you sitting?” he started explaining.

 

“How does it matter? I asked.

“See you should have sat on the seats towards the left end of the screen, from there if you bend a little and looked up, you would have seen a lot, believe me!”  

I somehow swallowed my anger. Later that day in the cricket field each guy from the gang kicked him repeatedly and simultaneously explained how the movie screen is two dimensional and his theory could not have worked.

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Finally in the 11^th standard, Lucky’s dreams came true when Monty’s parents went out of the city leaving the house, the TV and the VCR under his responsibility. We got in touch with the local “andawallah” who had “contacts” and got hold of the video of an adult movie.

That day in school, time did not seem to pass, by the evening everyone had gathered at Monty’s place, no cricket that day. Lucky was jumping around like a monkey in desperation when the VCR had problems starting. Finally when it started, there was pin drop silence.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. We panicked, the VCR was immediately switched off and the only available channel those days, the humble Doordarshan, came up. It was Monty’s neighbour, Uncle Pandey. He had come to enquire whether Monty was fine and had food.

He was surprised to see around 10 adolescent kids watching “Krishi Darshan” on Doordarshan, so attentively. When Monty’s parents returned, he had some explaining to do why all his friends were watching Krishi Darshan and how that helped our botany marks.  

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During Engineering first year, I met a guy Subhash, who watched adult movies every week in one of the cinema halls in the city, Delight, famous for such movies. He offered to take me for one. It seemed unethical to bunk classes and watch a movie, that too an adult one, however with lots of difficulty I gave my ethics a break.  

I was entering the hall with some nervous tension, while Subhash kept comforting me, “Load na le be, everyone comes here!”

Suddenly I saw a recognizable bald head. It was Madhav uncle, our next door neighbour! Both of us looked sheepishly at each other and disappeared on either sides of the cinema hall.

“Subhash big problem man, my next door neighbour saw me here. His son is my friend. ” I said extremely worried.

“He is married and has kids? Don’t worry, he is more worried than you, he would take this secret to his grave!” he started watching the movie intently.  

He was right. Madhav uncle never visited our home after that day and avoided me whenever we met. He smiled at me just once when he got transferred to another city. I feel sorry for him, he did not have Youtube in those days! 

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My parents got transferred to Kolkata during my second year of engineering and I stayed in a mess, with couple of nicer guys from my batch, one of them a guy from Kolkata extremely naïve and gullible on sexual matters.

While in the 8^th standard he asked one of his elder cousins the meaning of “Dharshan” which means rape in Bangla. His idiotic cousin only said that a girl may get pregnant if you do so. In school he learnt about friction which is “Gharshan” in Bangla, meaning two bodies rubbing against each other.

He confused the two words and inferred that a girl gets pregnant if a guy rubs against her body. With this fear, he did not board crowed buses and trains for around two years, for the fear of impregnating the ladies!

 

During the late nineties and early 2000s, Computers with gigabytes of memory had made their way into the rooms of almost all engineering students and so had movies of all kinds. Leaving the top colleges and certain geeky exceptions, I do not think any engineering student worth his salt, used his computer for anything much other than listening to music and watching movies and quite a bit of porn as well.  

Vicky in our engineering class was considered an expert in the latter. He always carried a hard drive that had around 20 GB of pornographic movies. These were segregated in folders as per the tastes of different people, “soft”, “hard” and so on. He was extremely serious and meticulous at this and valued his reputation as a provider of porn movies not only to our class, but across batches, seniors and juniors. 

Harsh, a day scholar in our class, had never watched an adult movie and hence he borrowed one from Vicky. Both his parents were working and all three of them, his parents and he had the keys to his house. He was hoping to use the afternoon after college to finish the movie off, before his parents came in and then return the CD the day after.

 
The next day he narrated his nightmare.  

His father was feeling sick, had taken the day off and was resting in the bedroom. Unaware Harsh started the porn movie in full volume in his room, and to his horror saw his father standing behind him. 

“Aise time par mouse bhi galat click hota be, window close nahi hota!” he explained in sorrow how he had to try four or five times to close the movie window.

He was contemplating moving to the college hostel and he would not be able to stay in his house with all that guilt, his father had given him a mouthful and his parents were not talking to him. Vicky tried to console him and explain that even his father would have watched porn sometime or the other.

Though not so serious, I had a similar situation with my dad, one night while on vacation, third year of engineering.

Zee MGM used to show unedited English movies before the I&B ministry raised a hue and cry, and I was waiting intently to “hit luck” with mom and dad asleep inside. Sharon stone was making love in Sliver, when dad suddenly appeared from behind saying, that he was not feeling sleepy and wanted to watch some TV.

 I immediately changed the channel saying, “These guys show all rubbish these days.”

Switched to Star Movies, Leonardo kissing a girl.

My mind raced quickly, National Georgraphic should be safe. The program was “Mating habits of big Cats” and a Lion and Lioness were mating.

“When you want them they don’t come and now they would be in bulk in every channel” I thought and gave the remote to dad, saying I was sleepy! 

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Married for 7 years now with my sweetheart from college, obviously I would now know about sex like anyone else. However thinking back, these instances seem funny and I laugh at them sometimes. On the issue of sex education, I feel obviously we have a cultural issue and one has to be restrained with kids, but this brouhaha over sex has to eventually go and we need to be able to speak about it more openly without shame.

Whether one agrees or not, the above was the situation of almost every teenager during the 80s and 90s, the confusion and growing up knowing things by hit and trial was fun at times, but it would have been better if at some point parents and teachers explained what actually sex means, that kissing scenes in movies was not really a big deal.

If there was sex education in school, we probably would not have boycotted that poor guy in the 5^th standard for speaking the truth, Lucky may not have been so desperate with Manisha Koirala and we probably would not have gathered that day at Monty’s place to “learn” about sex from an adult movie. Murmu could have easily taken crowded buses in secondary school and Vicky probably would not have maintained his 20 GB hard disk. Maybe Harsh’s father should have understood the situation and mentored him in a cool way.

Parents also would have to understand that whether they like it or not, every kid would eventually watch his share of porn in college. With sex education in high school, his learning over the subject would be balanced, else they would learn about sex from these unrealistic movies.

Worse they may not learn anything at all and may end up not having an as fulfilling married life, as they could. They may make huge mistakes because they would not know properly about sexually transmitted diseases, protected sex and unwanted pregnancy among other things.

Maybe a mixture of some of these reasons made Madhav uncle visit the Delight talkies to watch adult movies many years after marriage. Maybe it is not the case anymore, at least in the bigger cities, but girls like Nisha should not have been ostracized and made fun of for having an innocent teenage affair.

We need not be obsessed with sex and lose all self-control, but as we move into the next level of development for the nation, the hypocrisy and conservativeness around sexual issues and romantic relationships needs to be toned down for more mature, enlightened and responsible generations for the future.