Sex before Marriage ...

Laziness, inertia, and finding my feet under the Toubé Bäs table has kept me away from one of my core passions: writing, and writing here. I really hope to resume well now, though.

 

In the last few months, I have rediscovered the joys of practicing yoga, and it's especially fun to practice it while you see the new-age RDB* sharing some interesting thoughts about Indianism, and related stuff. 

 

(*Ram Dev Baba) 

 

In one of those programs (Aastha Channel - 8pm every evening), he informed the observers about his bigtime vision of making India self-dependent, and proud of itself. Just like America is.

 

According to him, the Amercians were so annoyed with the English rule, and so wanted to get over it, that they changed just everything that the British had taught them. Hence, they started driving on the right of the road, and manufactured switches which turned-on when switched upwards ... 

 

(Incidently, I am watching the Americans in the process of trouncing Brazil in the English game of 'soccer'. The Brazilans, coached by the GREAT DUNGA, are lagging 0-2!  - The world is surely changing)!

 

Indians, on the other hand, chose to follow whatever the English left us with. I had once seen a BBC video on the Khajuraho temple, and similarly erotic and revealing (educating?) temples all around India that the British chose to surround by thick forests so that not many people would know about them. Khajuraho managed to escape this treatment - but the Brits succeeded in keeping the others hidden for long times (even today, the public is unaware of many of them). The rationale for the Brits to hide these temples was that they did not like the concept of sex being discussed (forget performed) so openly. While sex in India was looked up upon as a divine activity, the British looked down upon it. While women in India wore all kinds of revealing clothes on the streets, the Brits attempted, and succeeded, to change this practice. 

 

The English are long gone, but we've nurtured their ideologies within us for decades. With sex now being a taboo subject in the Indian space, we Indians, on the general level, have become as desperate and sex-crazy as can be. Forbidden fruits are the sweetest, aren't they?

 

When I was in Germany for the hockey World Cup, the Indian and Paki fans would endlessly letch around the German and Dutch girls and women to the levels of embarassment (for us). Even today one can easily see the general, sometimes very educated, youth ... letching at women - even school girls - on the streets. If you watched the IPL that was staged at South Africa, you would have observed that it's just the Indian fans oogling their spleens out behind the picturesque cheerleaders - not a single gora or kaala firangi would either be expected to do this, or was caught doing it so desperately. I am yet to come across a desi who would have married a black woman - though there's no paucity of desi mundas who have tied the proverbial knot with a gori mem. The last point was pointed out by Alyque Padamsee during the Shilpa Shetty racism episode.

 

Even the concept of "no-no-to-sex-before-marriage" in India seems pretty hypocritical to me. If there's one land that has promoted sex-before-marriage as a necessary, celebrated protocol, it's India. This may come as a surprise to one, but not when one understands the difference between a marriage and a wedding. We are the biggest advocates of "sex-only-after-the-wedding", but equally vehement promoters of "sex-before-marriage".

 

In the western worlds, generally speaking, men and women spend time knowing each other for, at the least, a few hours before they end up sleeping with each other (out of pure lust). Love may or may not follow, and the former may or may not lead to a marriage. However, in our ethical country, the entire families combine all their efforts to ensure that the prospective birde and groom do not get too much of *that* private time and space before the wedding ceremony (this is just the urban society - in the semi-urban and rural society, the bride and groom are still not allowed to see each other before the marriage - ooops - wedding)! The bride and groom may get all the talk-time they want on the phone and exchange sweet nothings through the wire, but in-person meetings are scrutinized and dissected (especially by the bride's mom)!

 

However, the entire families also combine all their efforts to ensure that the bride and groom have the most memorable sex right on the first night of the marriage, or, the wedding-night. I have never heard about a concept of "suhaag raat" in the West ... but it's one of the most illustrious espisodes of an Indian wedding. When I realise that in more than 50% of the cases, the bride and groom may not have spent even 2 hours in private before the "thing", I can't help but feel hypocritical about the Indian theories and practice of sex.

 

We Indians have a lot of misconceptions about our niceness!

 

 

I enjoy coffee at a cafe near my office and, normally, have all my lunches there. The owner of the cafe (he's now become a good friend), one day, just walked upto me and said, "Sorabh ... you, for some reason, look very calm and positive - all I can say to you is that please do not marry. That will kill you, I fear." 

 

Now, I won't comment much on the calm and positive part, but I was stunned at this suggestion, and started wondering ... and we got talking. I questioned him about things related to marriage, including sex. He opined that people in India do not understand the concept of sex at all. Forget sex - most of us do not understand the concept of a marriage well. Most of the marriages, as he opined, are bordering on slavery (where there's possessiveness, obsession, cross-examinations, expectations - very rarely is there real care for the other person's happinness and pain). Marriages are marketed (especially to the bride) as an era of life when one has to selflessly devote oneself to another human being (this is something even I find impossible - by nature, every animal in this world does everything for his or her pleasure - that's an instinct we have inherited since ages - so being selfless for a lifetime seems absurd as an idea). 

 

With such thought-kinetics in my mind, I jotted a few notes to ensure that I write about them the next time I blog  - and that's what has triggered all of the above! Would love to hear comments from you if you are reading this :)

 

Looking forward to a romantic, monsoon-ish train journey from Bangalore to Bombay (today), and these are the things I want to do in Bombay this time around:

 

1) Run in the Monsoons;

2) Play footer in the IIT campus - Pdot, Kashyap, and John may join in :) (wish Sari was there too);

3) Start working on the IITB Trivia book;

4) Have Kala Khatta and Bhel Puri at Juhu ... may be with Munmun;

5) Enjoy a play at Prithvi;

6) Have anda dosa and coffee at the Maddu Mess, preferably made by Auntiji or Uncleji (the last time, John made some for us - and they were as delicious!!);

7) Have some stuff at Theobroma;

8) Parade around the Linking Road - again, may be, with Munnu;

9) Have chai and khaari biscuit at some random chai ki tapri (wish Ashish or Sari were around); and

10) Visit Bajju Bhaiyya outside the campus (the Maruti Mandir)!

 

 

12 minutes left, Brazil have made it 2-2, and things are getting spicier! Dasvidaniya, then!