CONFESSIONS
ON THE SURFACE, THEY APPEAR NORMAL BUT HOW THEY FEEL ON THE INSIDE IS A DIFFERENT STORY
IHAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE. I have made love to someone whose name I do not know. Nor do I care to know. Let’s not call it “love”, it was just about sex: I was on an office tour to a small town. He, presumably a bell-boy of the hotel, wanted to know if I needed anything. I asked for a spa and a massage. He offered himself. I was in a restless mood and he made me happy. It made me happier when his face lit up with the Rs 1,000 I paid him for the service.
This is not my first confession. I have made my first confession, not to friends, but to a group of young women who approached me last month with a questionnaire in hand—for the annual india today Sex Survey, mapping the sex quotient of Indians. As one of the 400-plus ‘Never married’ individuals, out of about 4,000 men and women, I have quietly ticked ‘yes’ to the question: ‘Have you ever slept with someone whose name you did not know?’ My secret is now out in print—a nameless, faceless number in the survey—and alive forever in digital memory.
Look at me: I am not alone. I am 1 of every 3 adult Indian women who, like rockstars on the road, think there is nothing wrong with one-night stands. Like 1 in 7 of my fellow urban citizens, who sleep with people whose names they do not know, I believe in exploring the full dynamism of that elusive human experience called sex. On the surface, we appear normal. But how we feel on the inside is a different story: indistinguishable from the happily-smug men and women in the midst of India’s new plenty, we inhabit hidden depths across the country. How well does the nation know us? THE YEAR WAS 2003 Not well enough. It was the third year of the new millennium and sex was suddenly, and unashamedly, in the air. The land of Kamasutra, with 300 ways of love buzzing in its collective consciousness, seemed busy with its favourite pastime—in and out of the marriage bed. An increasingly public erotic culture sent out messages of a youthful nation poised on the threshold of a new millennium to inaugurate its new ‘age of un-innocence’. And female sexuality was at the centre of a million sexual fantasies. At least, that’s how it seemed to the editorial team of the india today magazine. As journalists decided to track sexual attitudes in modern India, the lens centred on women. Between films advertising 17 kisses, raunchy music videos and soaps on television, Page 3 cleavage battles in print, they perceived a savvy tribe of ‘new women’ doing better than boys at school, increasingly holding leadership jobs in corporate India, making personal choices at home, work—and their own sexuality. No longer guilt-ridden, but unstoppable, demanding the right to be fulfilled in every possible way.
The editors decided to put this bold new world to the test. The first comprehensive survey to track the sexual attitudes of the urban Indian woman was commissioned, on over 2,000 women belonging to the middle and upper middle classes across 10 cities. Charting through a terrain of inhibitions and inconsistencies, the surveyors captured the modern Indian woman—caught between propriety and pleasure, norms and needs. I AM A STATISTIC In this country of teeming billions, I am just a blip, a statistic not worth bragging about: I am a single working woman, one of the 71.4 million out of India’s 587 million women. Without a husband, brother or father to take care of me, I defy the laws of Manu. And the nation denies me space: I cannot have more than 250 gm of gold (although mining barons can send out goldplated wedding invitation cards). I am the last person any bank wants to loan money to (they would prefer people who would rather leave the country than return it). I cannot adopt a child, be a surrogate mother, and even if I conceive with donor sperms, it will be easier for me to climb the Everest than get a birth certificate for my child (lucky Karan Johar, whose unnamed twins at least got a birth certificate this week). Oh, well, as a single woman, I can’t even reach the top of the majestic Charminar in Hyderabad.
But I am the single biggest change that has happened to this ambitious nation this millennium. I outshine boys in the classroom. I am the top scorer in competitive exams. Talk to recruiters: 7 in 10 top industries want me for my work ethic, lack of politics and team approach.
At home, I have learnt the ‘male’ skills of driving, investing, banking. I multi-task, I work, I earn, I spend, I travel, I fight, I challenge, I suffer, I survive. But, above all, I love and I live life to the lees. And unlike my mother’s generation, that took great pride in pleasing others, I take care of my own pleasure—without guilt or guile. I ask the world to take me on my own terms. And lay yours out, so I can see them. And I am changing the dynamics of love, sex, marriage and relationships in this 5,000-year-old country—where successive governments try and fail to change the great disparities and inequalities of ancient personal laws that govern personal lives of all communities.
AGE OF UN-INNOCENCE
“Even when they are in love, women sleep with multiple partners. Only one of these is a man. Silence, anxiety, guilt, denial and distrust are the others…” That was the message thrown up by the first india today sex survey, The Sex Report, conducted across 10 cities and 2,305 women. But something did not seem right to the editors. Weren’t the new-generation women supposed to be “leaders and cheerleaders of sexual liberation”? Yet, the largest number of women decided to hide their response to almost every question under the evasive ‘Don’t Know/ Can’t Say’ option, 25 per cent even said they were ‘indifferent’ to sex. “If the modern woman continues to represent her sexuality as different from what it really is, the fear is she may become a caricature, more in control of her lingerie than her life,” wrote journalist Shefalee Vasudev, who put the issue together.
The issue took the nation by storm. As copious letters and calls bombarded its editors, it seemed india today had trodden into dangerous waters: female sexual desire. “While researchers were roughed up by brothers and husbands of those being interviewed, many readers apparently wanted to do the same to us—everyone, it seemed, had a secret life they didn’t want out in the open,” wrote Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie.
Yet the issue turned out to be the bestseller of the year. It hinted at a conflicted nation, interested in sex in private but pretending to be affronted by it in public. And so started the annual ritual of mapping love, lust and longing behind closed bedroom doors and between the sheets: women and men, married or single, at work or in campus,
teenagers to 40-somethings, in towns or in metros. And as it became an annual ritual, statistics started capturing an attitudinal sea-change: from the guarded conservatism of the early 2000s to open pursuit of pleasure. The surveys revealed cracks in modern marriages. And how people were less and less judgemental about others’ needs and desires, what was shameful and what was not. Over the years, angry letters and calls to successive sex surveys disappeared. India was clearly ready for collective confession, acceptance and absolution.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
In 2004 (What Men Want), when in a survey of nearly 3,000 men between ages 18 and 55, 72 per cent said they expected their brides to be virgins, prompting Mahesh Dattani, playwright and theatre director, to write: “Men have yet to discover their own psychic G-spot even as they grope to find women’s.” It was in 2005 that premarital sex broke into Indian consciousness in a big way, when india today brought out Sex and the Single Woman, with 31 per cent of 2,035 single women across 11 cities saying, “His inability to understand my expectations” puts me off sex with a man. That year, actor Khushboo’s comment in a column in the Tamil edition of the magazine—“No educated man would expect his wife to be a virgin”—drew a tsunami of protests besides defamation suits. It was only in 2010 that the Supreme Court finally dismissed all 22 cases against her, observing there’s nothing legally wrong with premarital sex or live-in relationships where consenting adults are involved.
In 2006 (Single Young Men: Secret Desires), unmarried men in the 16-25 age group stunned the nation by revealing that 37 per cent ‘straight’ men had already had a homosexual experience. The 2007 survey (Sex and Marriage), captured men across 11 cities seeking thrills outside their marital bed. In 2008, The Sexy Secrets revealed male addiction to pornography, among other things. In The Fantasy Report of 2009, the main emphasis was on sexual fantasies and desires. The 2010 survey (Women Want More) found women in an assertive mode: 44 per cent said they would talk it out if they found their partner had been unfaithful and 22 per cent would tell him they had the right to do the same. By 2011, about 49 per cent wives, bored with their husbands, claimed they refused sex routinely by faking a headache. In 2012 (Between the Sheets of Small Town India), 58 per cent respondents seemed fine with the idea of detaching emotions from sex. “No longer figures of piety, women from the small towns of India here come across as sexual agents in their own right,” wrote Ira Raja, author and columnist.
The 2013 survey (A Decade of Change) found women asserting their sexuality in unequivocal terms. The workplace was the new playing field, with 16 per cent women open to intimacy, even if casual sex, with a colleague. “What we might be witnessing is the reaction to an extraordinary churn in social and cultural contexts. As more women go out to work—and are more visible in public spaces than before—they challenge male dominance of public spaces and, in turn, are subjected to unwanted attention,” explained sociologist Sanjay Srivastava. In 2014-15 (Teen Sex Survey), 25 per cent teenagers said they had had sex while still in school. The 2016 edition (Love, Lust & Longing) captured the ‘trust deficit’ in modern marriages, with money emerging as the negotiating point.
This year, as Indian men and women open up their erotic lives, their sensual needs and imaginings on our pages, we compare 15 years of our journey to capture the attitudinal change. The survey suggests that the vast majority of Indians are satisfied with their sex lives. But there’s more to it than the picture of happy domesticity, with a clear difference in perception, practice and preference between men and women, confirming some conventional wisdom, exploding some myths. Are one-night stands okay with you? “Yes,” say 35 per cent men and women—openly indicating the sharpest shift toward casual, transactional sex, disengaged from emotions. Disturbingly, the dark side of technology—internet, mobile phones to dating and hookup apps—is clearly affecting personal lives: “Has watching pornography on the net affected your sex life?” 42 per cent men and women agree. Is that why men and women facing “unwanted or forced sex” in relationships rising? “Yes,” say 25 per cent urban Indians.
Over a thousand questions, 50,000 respondents and 15 years later, we are perhaps closer to answering that question: what transpires when love becomes a three-letter word? Take a roller-coaster ride with us, check out the sometimes dark, sometimes sunny underbelly of the nation’s intimate life, as we take you through the seismic shift behind closed doors and between the sheets of modern India for the last 15 years.