An 'Adult' cogitation..

SEX,VAGINA,BREASTS,PENIS,SEMEN,MASTRUBATION...

There is a mild thud inside me as I write these...biological terms...I still refrain from using a few more of such explicit terms - 'why?' is what this post is about.

As I was reading Suman's 'Castration' post a couple of weeks back...my younger brother came into my room and stood behind me with his arms on the head of the chair on which I sat. At first I did not realise that he was reading the post along with me...and even after I had, I did not find any reason to react instantly. A minute or half into it- we both realised what the other person was reading and we both started.

"Err…"
"What IS this..Hina!!"

Before I could convince myself that I was not entertaining myself with a frivolous unaesthetic pornographic tale that might have qualified a nervous reaction, I found myself giving my 15 year-old brother an explanation.

"Err..Its not what you think it is..."
"Well...Of course, its not. What did I say?" he said, sniggering.
"But its NOT!" I revolted.
"Sure sure..." nodding his head in feigned understanding.

It is an art. The way he irritates me. I knew I was beating a dead horse.

I felt an urge to straighten out this misapprehension immediately. It was as though I was being convicted of a crime I did not commit. I knew what part of the post was exposed to his view in that particular moment. He must have read fragments like: "two round breasts, the opened thighs, and his erect penis…" It felt very awkward at first. I had even increased the font size of the web page through pressing the Ctrl and + keys together...so he had a rather…magnified view of my....private preoccupations.

Then I thought….. he is young and immature and so probably could not construe the aforementioned terms in anything but socially verboten terms. As this realisation dawned upon me, I became less eager to clear my position in one breath. Convinced that he knew all about sex and much more, I looked at him, trying not to fall into the trap of his annoying yet infectious snigger.
If I needed to put my point across here, seriousness was a necessary pre-requisite.

I remember how in school days, it was the 8th or 9th grade, I reckon, when we had those eye-opening Biology chapters in our curriculum. It was a tough task to exude decent nonchalance while the teacher explained (referring to diagrams, not to forget) the complex sexual anatomy of the human body. And that too, in face of racy boys who having already read the chapters back home - a scholarly eagerness rarely exhibited in any other subject - were chuckling explosively underneath their desks, bent,on pretext of picking up an intentionally dropped pen/scale/eraser/pencil. It was the scare of being reprimanded by the teacher for being so utterly shameless and 'dirty-minded' that kept a check on the chuckles and the queue of delinquents outside the class.

A few significant Biology chapters were obliterated from our course back then -perhaps for the fear of turning the students' eye-opening tutorials into wide-eyed addictions; and also to save many Biology teachers the discomfiture of addressing a class of developing hormones.

It was a year later that I learnt that ninety percent of the class had dutifully read those omitted chapters, which as I later came to know, explained the 'real thing'. I happened to be part of the other ten percent who never cared for out-of-syllabus questions in exams, and thus, remained unenlightened for yet another year.
Hence, I always found myself outside the huddle of gossiping and giggling girls who shared 'Adult' humour or in the popular jargon, 'Non-Veg jokes'. Besides the fact that I always found them crude and unfunny, I could never really ‘get’ these jokes. One could say that the former was a result of the latter. But, with all due respect to pornographic jocularity, I still have a hard time searching for the 'joke' in the 'Non-Veg'.

I vividly remember that it was a bright summer’s morning. I was walking back to the classroom from the canteen, munching blissfully on a samosa, when this candid friend of mine, accidentally spilled the beans for me.(or should I say, spilled the… samosa for me…for I couldn’t really finish it after what she revealed) I was appalled apart from merely shocked to find about the act of penetration for the first time. I kept thinking about it for a few days. I had these million questions and doubts but I did not dare ask anyone, being the shy simpleton that I was. Gradually of course I conciliated myself with the concept. But I was always ill at ease at using the terminology that referred to it, and often found myself at the other end of the following exclamations: “Tch-Tch” ,“Aww…”, “Look at her..!”, “Come-On…”, “Grow-Up!”, “It’s the reality of life” especially from those who were much more denotative in their expressions than me. I knew even then that it was not purely in the vein of discussing squarely the “reality of life” that such saucy discussions used to take place. But I was never fiercely judgmental for all I could help. For I was terribly inquisitive and interested in them myself. Only, I maintained a respectable distance and deterred from an active participation.

As I entered college, I had matured, which is to say, I did not jump at hearing the word 'sex' or the likes and could bring myself to discuss ‘issues’ explicitly.
I remember reading about this racket that installation of a condom vending machine in the JNU campus attracted. A few ultra-conservative minds were of the opinion that it spread vulgarism and further westernised India. I could not grasp the head or tail of that argument. I think we use vulgarism and the ‘It’s not our culture’ argument as a facade to conceal our hypocrisy, and a deceleration of our open-mindedness and democratic impulse. Then it becomes a case of social mores impinging on freedom of expression, and rationality being compromised in honour of ‘social taboos’. Majority of the rural population of India is totally unaware of the use of contraceptives. In fact, even most educated 'modern' city people are too shy to go to a medical store and ask for a condom and would rather risk unprotected sex. So the sentience of the agrarian society is beyond pathetic.

So, when I come across the unabashed directness of the some of the creative write-ups of Aruni or Suman, I do not know where to place these people in a comparison. Two parallel worlds, aren’t they?

But within the given context of our social setting, there will always remain words that will be needed to be minced. We sure have evolved, democratised and sensitised ourselves but surely nowhere close to being enough.As I have mentioned before, I used to be the kind of person who avoided such unfastened expressions. The kind of person who would rather use the phrase 'love-making' for 'sex'. But you realise that there is a particular terminology for particular descriptions and you cannot go on biting your lip in the garb of decency or social protocol. And as i say this, I hold vulgarism and salaciousness in a totally different arena of discussion.

I recall this scene from Walker's 'The Color Purple'(the novel that I have mentioned earlier in my first post to this blog) which is probably one of the most impressing scenes in the novel, when Shug Avery hands Celie a mirror and asks her to look at her own vagina.

"What, too shame even to go off and look at yourself..?" ....."Why, Miss Celie" she says, "you still a virgin."

Celie has mothered two children..she has been been raped continually as a child by her own father, she is given to sexual commodification by her unfeeling husband...if anything, she would have the technical know-how of sex. But the sex-education that Shug Avery imparts to Celie is something more sublime. It is about knowing and loving and respecting your own body shamelessly. About having the gumption to express your fierce individualistic desires and the needs of your body. About liberating yourself from social control.

So, I looked at my brother and I told him exactly what Suman’s post was about. I told him it was about the culture-shock that this person gets on migrating from the country to the city, about the sexual needs of a man, about a man masturbating and about motleying social protocols. Visibly,my brother was caught unawares. And his face read - "THAT was uncalled for.." Then, I found him looking at the screen of the computer pensively... He turned to me...Hmmm-ed and asked, “What does 'Castration' mean?”

I was proud of the fact that he was not sniggering anymore.