Sex and the Indian society

The attitude of Indians towards issues like sex, sexual education, AIDS and public display of affection is distressing. The country which gave ‘kamasutra’ to the world is struggling to find a balance between its culture (as advocated by the fundamentalists) and reason. Just a few months back there was this incident of a 70 year old woman being raped by 4-5 men in some village. This was a sexual punishment to an offence committed by her son.
Sex in India is still not something which can be freely discussed on a dining table within a family. There is a constant rise in the number of young couples choosing to stay in a live-in relationship in big cities which is the reason for our bollywood movies becoming more and more expressive these days but the fact remains that most small town dwellers still find it uncomfortable to talk about the 3 letter word.
Even big cities and metros like Chennai impose rules (mostly just implied) like reserving the left side of the bus for women and the right side for men and any trespass into the other territory is greeted with sullen faces or even an insult at times. In most cases the people of the opposite sex would not occupy vacant seats in the other domain. Walking hand in hand with your girlfriend, boyfriend or even spouse attracts nasty comments or/and abuses.
For a country like India where the population index beats any other index hands down it is imperative that people are made comfortable talking about condoms in public. STDs and the threat of HIV+ can be taught to people only when they are in a comfort zone when you speak of sex. If the TV in the living room get switched off when Amitabh Bachan speaks about safe sex or Shabana Azmi speaks about breast cancer, the millions spent in these awareness campaigns would just go down the drain.
We are a nation which is on the verge of making same sex relationships legal which is funny because over so many years we have not been able to accept a so called ‘normal’ relationship. Any sexual relationship which is outside the wedlock is still a taboo (and sometimes illegal as well). Sex which should be one of the most important factors in any intimate relationship is sill considered a word which may result in a broken relationship. A guy demanding sex in a pre-marital relationship is considered lecherous, the partner demanding a non-conventional sexual desire is considered unholy. Even married couples have to ‘steal’ time from their families to indulge in sexual activities (which may be part of the fun but should not be forced).
The sour fact is that the people who advocate a form of Indian culture where sex is considered evil are the same who commit sexual crimes like the one stated above, the states which have a strict code of conduct for men and women in sexual matters (or even in something as simple as sitting together) are the same that role out the maximum number of pornographic movies each year, the men who insult and ridicule the gay community are the same who indulge in pedophilic activities with young boys.
If India has to fight evils like HIV+, breast cancer, female feticide, rape, pedophilic activities, etc. we would have to stop tagging sex as evil. Embrace sex for a brighter India.

The land of the poor :-(

“Jobs arrived in India barefoot and threadbare. This is how he chose to dress, as an expression of a specific ideal or aesthetic. In India he was confronted for the first time with people who were poor – not the way California hippies were poor, by choice, but poor by fate. It was an eye-opener for him. The complete contrast with the material comforts of American life was intense and shocking, and it challenged everything he thought he knew up to that moment.”
The above is an excerpt from the book iCon by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. The book is about Steve Jobs, the man behind the company which challenged the way people thought and gave them things beyond their imagining, Apple. He came to India much earlier than he became the man the world recognizes today, in search of peace, in search of true knowledge, in search of his ‘guru’. It has been many years since then. Governments have changed, people have become more ‘educated’, industries have been flourishing; money has been flowing now in India like never before. Today the world talks about Ambanis and Mittals and the world of technology has had the Indian impact in the western world which even Jobs recognizes today.
So, what would be the picture in front of Steve Jobs if he happened to visit India in the near future? He would perhaps land on the Mumbai airport, his plane caressing the world’s largest slum, Dharavi. He would then be escorted to his hotel and along the roads would notice small children thrust into begging. As a face of the technology world, he may want to visit the mecca of Indian technology, Bangalore. He better choose either to go on a chopper or make a trip at the time of a public holiday else the traffic would kill the good old man! And ironically, these are just the few of the ‘best’ places that any visitor to India may want to see. The Himalayas and the other tourist attractions are replete with so much commotion nowadays that the ‘firangis’ are easily baffled.
Today we may be able to boast of some of the richest men of the world belonging to India, but the fact remains that poverty is not abating. The number of people living below the poverty line is increasing by the hour. ‘Every fourth poor is an Indian’ has become a cliché (and is sadly true). Diseases like AIDS, cancer are engulfing the urban and rural alike and we still feel ashamed to discuss sex in front of our children while make no fuss about the tobacco that we smoke even with little children at home. Beggary is a bigger ‘industry’ than 'khadi'. The money is indeed flowing into our economy and India is getting rich but the percolation of this huge wealth is not yet happening. Add to these the troubled borders of India. Surrounded by arch rivals, petty beggars, infiltrators, have-nots, politically unstable nations and those that have a long history of stabbing on the back, India is indeed not in the situation which most of the European nations enjoy (with all of them surging forward competitively). Add to this our internal security threats and civil agitations like the ‘gujjar’ uproar recently. Sadly for India, though a lot of positive things are happening, we still are years behind the true independence that every human being dreams of; the true happiness is still elusive.