WELCOME to liberalised metro-India. Where anonymity thrives. Where it is hip to do your own thing. Where seminarists have decided that being part of an 'orthodox' collective morality isn't Progressive. Where Mira Nair's Kamasutra and Star Plus' Baywatch are the new munchies for the mind. Where Channel V veejay Laila's ascending hemline dictates fashion trends for the groovier campus kids. Where white-water-rafting, reiki sessions and 'meaningful relationships' lend thrilling distractions to MNC-routine-laden lifestyles. Where over 20 divorce petitions are filed on an average every day in the capital alone. Where it makes marketing sense to launch a magazine for the modern Indian woman with the challenge: "Smart. Sexy. Honest. Are you up to it?" Where national dailies give space and sanction to lesbian and gay causes. Where sex is no longer sacred, nor taboo. Where the chattering classes refer to the ever-growing politically correct lexicon...to find that the promiscuous and the adulterous are now called the Sexually Liberated.
"Sex before wedlock or even outside of it is no aberration today. I'd be stupid if I thought virginity was some kind of a virtue. My friends would think I'm someone out of the Bible if I accused a woman of being adulterous!" laughs Ruchika Pandey, a student of Mumbai's Sydenham College. Comfortably candid about the two "serious relationships" she's had by age 20, Ruchika openly talks of that one "exciting sexual encounter" with her best pal's boyfriend after a wild party last year. "My friend dumped him for someone else anyway. So what's all this promiscuity nonsense about? Who am I to judge anyone's sexual behaviour? Why judge others when everyone's into it!"
Years apart in age, Bengali litterateur Sunil Gangopadhyay, many of whose works have dealt with inter-personal relationships, is not alarmed by these youthful statements validating a promiscuous trend: "If two persons are into something by mutual consent, I do not find anything objectionable. After all, this has to do with the very basic instincts in men and women, and artificial restraints cannot make much of a difference."
BORN a decade before Ruchika and much later than Gangopadhyay, computer engineer Sanjay Iyengar reiterates their opinions. The bachelor says he has known too many "sexless marriages". "Legitimate sex, I gather from talks with married and unmarried friends, is boring. Without guilt and uncertainties sex is a monotonous routine. Like brushing your teeth! Thankfully, more people are coming around to this view," he says with a chuckle. "There's more sexual activity here than the prudes would be comfortable with."
And many a study quantifies Iyengar's claim. A survey in cultural anthropologist Dr Moni Nag's recent book entitled Sexual Behaviour and AIDS in India found 28 per cent male respondents from six Hyderabad colleges sexually active. Most say they had, as their sexual partners, older married women. A 36 per cent said they were keen on becoming sexually active and were waiting for the right partner. Another study in the book had 25 per cent of school students interviewed in urban and semi-urban areas of Delhi, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan agreeing with the statement: "I believe in getting pleasure where and when I want."
Precocious overstatements by wannabe-trendies? Maybe. But, in essence, not very different from the reaction of Karnataka chief minister J.H. Patel's middle-aged wife Sarvamangala to her husband's confession regarding his "fondness for wine and women" in a TV interview some time ago. The wife shrugged dismissively: "I know about his weaknesses and have forgiven him. He is free to do what he wants. Besides, all this is so common these days."
The experts agree. About 40 per cent of the calls that the Delhi-based Population Service International's sexual helpline receives are from people who are into pre- and extra-marital sexual relationships. Many of the callers, seemingly sexually active, are less than 16 years old. Calls before Valentine's Day have many youngsters—who choose that day to have sex for the first time—seeking advice on contraceptives. "Casual sexual relationships are not uncommon at all. By 'casual' I mean having a physical relationship with someone you don't know for very long and don't have an emotional commitment to. It's not as if these are freak sexual encounters, many engage in casual sex regularly," says project manager Kabir Singh.
Over 75 per cent of Bangalore-based psychotherapist Saul Perreira's patients come to him with relationship problems. "That's quite a bit of an increase. On a recent visit to a girl's college, I found about 65 per cent of them were sexually experienced by age 21. Hedonism has taken over. 'Maximise pleasure' is the new motto. Thus the tendency to seek push-button sex like all other push-button pursuits," he observes.
Sexologist Prakash Kothari says over 100 patients visit him at Bombay's KEM hospital every week. Unlike five years back, many of his patients today are unmarried. Venereal diseases were then the main complaint, but now many seek help to increase pleasure. In Delhi-based neuropsychologist Dr Avdesh Sharma's professional experience, sexual values have changed immensely for the urban Indian. "Today, sex is not just for procreation or long-lasting relationships. It is a tool for self-fulfillment in a Me-First generation. It is what one uses to fit in with peers, for career advancement and even as vengeance. Most importantly, sex is now a part of a package in inter-personal relationships. No longer is it just a one-person-in-a-lifetime thing," he says.
Sexual permissiveness seems to have arrived in urban India. Finding its way through the labyrinthine sexual relationships portrayed in the bold and beautiful potboilers beamed continually into drawing rooms. Borrowing from the new working woman who has more access and is more accessible to men than ever before. Thriving in discoesque get-togethers where alcohol helps inhibitions vanish. Gaining ground because of the non-judge-mental attitude that seems to be the mood in the metros.
But didn't promiscuity always exist? What is new about sexual activity—before marriage, within it or outside wedlock—in the land of Kamasutra? Opportunities, perhaps. And the choices that education has granted to the urbanite who now works in offices that aren't unisex, thinks little of living alone and of marrying only when he or she desires to. Also, a slew of stigmas have lost their sting. In urban India, at least, virginity is ceasing to be a moral indicator, live-in relationships and divorces are no more social shockers.
Hardly surprising, then, that 80 per cent of the Delhi-based women that Geetan Batra interviewed for a book on the 'changing attitude of the Indian woman towards her own sexuality', were not inclined to take any moral stance against friends who were indulging in extra-marital affairs. "Considering that the age of the respondents varied between 20 and 50, one assessed that the shock value and disapproval levels attached to promiscuity—in upper-middle class urban India—has reduced tremendously across the board," says Geetan.
Pre-marital sex is no longer considered a sin, indicates a recent survey, conducted in 16 cities by the Sex Education Counselling Research Training Division of the Family Planning Association of India. Ninety and 77 per cent of unmarried and educated women and men (between age 15 and 29) respectively condoned sex before marriage. Significantly, 16 per cent of the men and 5 per cent of the women felt that sexual experience before wedlock is a 'must'. On a smaller scale, Professor Paul Sachdev's survey based on a questionnaire given to 1,661 students of Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university had three-fourths of the male respondents say they didn't consider lack of virginity important.
The very definition of middle-class morality seems to be changing. Madras-based DEGA Institute's recently released 11-year-old study on the sexual mores of the middle and the upper middle class had 43 per cent (from a base of 16,154 respondents) confess to having had pre-marital sex. One out of every five married respondents admitted to having had extra-marital affairs.
Analysing the social arithmetic, Delhi-based advertising professional Madhavi Menon says: "The change is mostly because of the new profile of the Indian woman. My mother was married at age 21. I am unmarried at 32. The only men she really knew or met alone after sundown were family members. I have male friends who stay overnight at my pad after a late party. For mom, societal opinions were paramount. I don't even know my neighbours. I care a damn if they disapprove because I am not a virgin at age 32 just because I am a spinster!"
It's the New Emancipated Woman like Madhavi, feels filmmaker Aparna Sen, who has heralded the "present liberal behaviour". Sen tackled the theme closely in her highly-acclaimed film Paroma, which depicts an upper-middle-class Calcuttan housewife's journey to discover herself through an extra-marital affair with a man younger than herself. Sex and sexuality, therefore, become an important part of the Indian Woman's redefin-ition. "Now, she is perhaps seen as more assertive," Sen observes. And, maybe, more available.
"The woman colleague at office and the friend's wife were always objects for male fantasy," says 28-year-old banker Himanshu Vatsya. "But now, after liberal doses of promiscuous soaps from the West and rub-offs from women's magazines that give them tips on how to be a winner in bed. ..they are seemingly more accessible."
IN touch with the changing attitudes that are sweeping metro-India through her weekly chatshow The Kiron Kher Show, our very own desi-Oprah-in-the-making Kiron opines that globalisation is responsible. A recent episode of her programme had women above 40 discussing the sexual implications of middle-age. Answering a question as to whether she preferred Amitabh Bachchan over her husband Anupam Kher, the hostess unabashedly chose Amitabh for admiration but for "a roll in the haystack", Anupam. A frankness that few Indian tube hosts and hostesses would have demonstrated a few years ago. "Information is at one's fingertips, people are studying abroad and subsequently each generation is more liberal than the previous," says Kiron.
Less macrocosmic in his views, Calcuttan finance executive Indranil Chatterjee, 29, holds media titillation responsible for bringing about a revolution in sexual mores in the metros in the short span of five years. "The young are deeply influenced by American programmes, where people wear outrageous clothes and anything goes by way of sex," he says. And, these boob tube offerings are increasingly becoming the guiding spirit for Indian scriptwriters. The stolidly middle-class Hum Log is giving way to serials like Junoon and Sahil where extra-marital affairs are portrayed as part of urban lifestyle.
Add to that the bedroom intrigues in serials like Santa Barbara and The Bold and the Beautiful and it almost seems like the airwaves are enticing the urbanite into believing constancy in relationships is unnatural. Our own desi version of these Western soaps with a model-laden cast, A Mouthful of Sky, had characters hop, skip and jump bedrooms between shots of martinis and corporate intrigues. There was even a homosexual character. And why not? "A couple of models in the serial are into mild drugs and each is going around with 12 guys at a time," says the serial's producer Ashok Banker.
Beauty queen Madhu Sapre believes that with considerations for a successful career and affluence assuming priority, relationships have taken a backseat. "Which is why there is neither commitment nor intensity...promiscuity follows," says the svelte Sapre. Interestingly, filmmaker Basu Bhattacharya's last film before his death, Astha, was a comment on marriage, materialism and adultery. He believed the yuppie's increasing access to easy money is directly proportionate to his dissatisfaction in relationships. "Insecurities and restlessness have zoomed and along with it the desire to live life faster. Today, 80 per cent of Bombay's hotels run on an hourly booking basis. Consumer culture has seduced and trapped us and rising promiscuity is a part of that package," he said.
Experts add to these homegrown analyses. P.D. Gheewala, principal counsellor at Bombay's family court, feels that the lack of patience to make marriages work, coupled with the fact that divorce is no longer a deviant, have people flitting from one person to another. This fragmentation of the family, says Dr Murli Desai, head of the Family Studies unit at the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, has people's own wants take precedence over relationships. For many, cheating on a partner isn't a moral dilemma any more.
"The assertion of sexuality as a personal expression by today's youth has nothing to do with their otherwise pro-social compassionate behaviour. The whole business is about treating sexuality as just another experience like going to different restaurants," says Dr Shekhar Sheshadri, assistant professor at Bangalore-based NIMHANS. Interestingly, Dr Achal Bhagat, Apollo Hospital psychiatrist, feels that increasing promiscuity in urban India is better understood through Zubermann's theory about the reasons for the making of drug addicts. "A sense of alienation, low thresholds of boredom and desperate sensation-seeking is pushing the lonely, stressed urbanite into one relationship after another, just as it once pushed him into drugs," says Bhagat.
And is the fallout as disastrous? Has the Star Plus-consuming, Wrangler-clad, disco-swinging modern Hindustani successfully managed to block out the sexual conservatism that was part of his education? Has he managed to sever ties with his stable small-town relatives who hold on to age-old values? Or, is he caught between traditional sexual beliefs and his attempts to fit in with the modern mores of an upbeat society?
A graduate student at Delhi University, Priyaranjan Mohanti, says he breaks into cold sweat every time he thinks of the mess he'd get into back home if his girlfriend insists on marriage. "What if she's not as modern as she seems and says that physical relationship must climax in a wedding?" he asks anxiously. Housewife Sapna Banerjee is repulsed by the openness at the get-togethers she attends and complains her husband's drunk colleagues often end up touching her: "But cringing and making a scene is out. It's narrow-minded, old-fashioned and embarrasses my husband!" Ananya Sahani, a 27-year-old banker, faces a greater dilemma. Having gone through a broken marriage, two relationships and three psychotherapists in two years, she's drug-doused and depressed. "Is it wrong for progressive types to expect commitment from people you've slept with?" she asks.
Sahani is not the only one with these difficult questions. Tarishi, a Delhi-based helpline for reproductive and sexual health issues, has received 15,000 calls since its inception 19 months ago. "On the one hand we have 15 to 60-year-olds enquiring about pleasure enhancement techniques and on the other, we have to deal with fears regarding pregnancy, discovery and guilt emerging from a middle-class value system," says director Radhika Chandiramani. A telling instance of these confusing times, Radhika observes, was when a young boy, keen on having sex with his classmate who was similarly inclined, wanted to know whether her future husband would get to know that she wasn't a virgin.
More dangerously, says Dr Bhagat,instances of sexual abuse have risen dramatically. "Children and women are commodified. Patients come in with horrifying stories of sexual humiliation," says the doctor. Social activist Swami Agnivesh isn't surprised. Inundated as the urban centres are with erotic Western images, the firebrand swami feels they have become the breeding ground for sexual distortions and perversions. The crime indicators, he says, prove what all this preoccupation with illegitimate sex is doing to Indian society. The Personal Point triple murder and the Naina
Sahni tandoor murder are surrounded by tales of sex and sleaze. "These, of course, are extreme examples, but they are telling warning signals. Sex was a sublime science in the Vedas, today it has become an appendage of a degenerate culture," the activist warns. Others work out the dichotomy between old and new value systems better. Sobhana Sonpar, student counsellor at IIT, Delhi, says that though more students are matter-of-fact about being sexually active, most seem to think they will marry their partners eventually. "Whether they will marry or not is another thing.
