Sex and the Today

Finally got around to writing about a topic close to my heart and something that I’ve been meaning to write (& right) for quite a while now.

I am sure that most people reading this have debated, read and deliberated over this topic at expansive length but I just wanted to question the ridiculous morality that most of us seem to harbor when it is related to anything close to sex.

The genesis for this post first happened when I had gone to visit one of my dad’s office colleagues; they have a son around the age of 4. He had just come out of his bath and his mom was drying him up with a towel. In the meantime, the kid was innocently playing with his private part. The way in which his mother reacted when she spotted it, was shocking – she first slapped him and shouted at him for doing something that was dirty and which he had been warned before against indulging in, and actually fell to tears which she quickly swallowed when she realized that I was present in the room.

This act between mother and son was a spontaneous one. The son’s act was spontaneous due to his natural curiosity and the mother’s due to her indoctrinated horror at something she perceives as a ‘dirty act’. I am sure that she was acting out of love and genuine concern for her child but was unable to fathom the damaging consequences with which she handled this incident.

And I believe that this is a common instance that happens across a lot of homes in India and abroad. Maybe other parents do not show an outburst along the lines that this ignorant woman showed but I’m sure that such things are heavily frowned upon till today.
This opening act leads to my central thesis of sex being invariably seen as a “dirty thing”/”an immoral thing”/ “an animal or carnal instinct” / “the devils act” ….(adjectives galore).

This medieval idea of sex being portrayed as “an immoral act” has pervaded to this date and defied logic and rationality. And believe it or not, it is hardwired into the maximum majority from childhood, along the lines of the kid above. We are allowed to question on why we have a nose, how does a car move, why is the sky blue – but as soon as we ask our elders “how did babies come” or “what are condoms” – glances are exchanged, the room becomes deathly still and the kid feels he is being taken to the gallows for these filthy thoughts.
Our elders are genuinely ignorant of this fact – the fact that they imbibe a sense of horror to sex in the same way that their parents have imbibed in them, without a moment’s pause of thought on what damage they are inflicting on their kids.

From childhood itself sex and everything related to it is submerged under a guilty thrill…a guilt that manifests itself in ugly forms over the lifespan of an individual’s life.

This early trauma for the kid when it comes to anything sexual makes a deep and lasting impression on the child’s latter life when it comes to relationships and obviously physical intimacy.

The kid senses the secrecy shrouding any mention of this topic and starts to either swallow this natural curiosity or satisfies it in hushed conversations with school friends and the external media in today’s age.
The problem being – she develops a distorted view on sex that lasts throughout her life and is permeated into her children and her confused relationship with her lovers.

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*She represents the adult male and female.

I hope to write more on this topic. As you can imagine, the topic is very vast and there are multiple things that I would like to cover. I genuinely believe that our generation has suffered greatly due to the duality that is related to sexual morals and I hope that it is not transferred to our kids.

As a disclaimer, I also want to include that I am greatly influenced by Bertrand Russell’s – Marriage & Morals.

One Strange Moment of Inconsequential Inspiration

The title is self explanatory. It was one of those moments that enraptures you. These moments can be as varied as seeing the Titanic just touching the iceberg to something as mundane as someone being punched in the gut and the grin turning to a grimace(in the middle of a joke for example). Time stops on these occasions and the the instant is seared on your mind. These seconds of infinity makes one wonder at the compressibility of time. This post was written a couple of months ago and the memory is something I keep as a snapshot.

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She sat still and all alone,

The beautiful slender hands covered her face,

Her torso was slightly bent forwards,

Those locks fell loosely around her face

And caressed her hands.

She sat still in that posture for

An ephemeral entirety.

I tried in vain to see beyond her

Captivating hands but they had filled her features,

Her hands told a story that

Probably her eyes couldn’t capture.

The veins of her hands stood out slightly,

Her hands didn’t clench the face but

Was placed lightly on it as if a

Work of a divine sculptress.

Through this blur of movement,

Sat she calm – the deity of distress silent.

Her hands with the long fingers,

Ending in natural pink halfmoons,

Twas like a river dissolving the grief of her mind.

It felt like she was channeling her sorrow

Onto her palms, and from her palms to

Whatever she would touch next..

Hallowed Corridors

Offtopic : 1) My last post was not exactly yesterday. I have tons of stuff to write about but somehow lack the execution with which I am satisfied. Hence I tend to have a few incomplete docs in "My Documents". My new computer and better net connection will hopefully make me a better blogger.

2) I also put a lot of passion into my blogs and can't write when I don't get the feelof it. A large part of me is smirking and telling me that I am plain lazy.
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The last viva of my engineering career got over a couple of days back. It was a relief to walk out of it, never to face strange externals and smirking internals. My friend(Abbas) and me decided to visit our school which is located right behind my college. Abbas was a year younger to me at Christ Church school(CCS). We never knew each other at school but had similar experiences.

Both of us were happily anonymous and were utterly confused about life and times during our school days. I put it that we just took like 15 years to get accustomed to the world around after our birth. ( We cry as we are confused on being born, the lights, sounds and PEOPLE scare the umbilical cord out of us. We both seem to have stopped crying but were similarly confused throughout school). I passed through school similar to a blind man walking without a stick in a rain forest. The highest post I ever held was desk monitor when in the 5th standard. To cut a long story tiny, I spent my school days catching up and fitting in. Abbas tells me, he spent his- brooding.

Hence, it was with mixed feelings that we entered our school gates. The place was deserted as the vacations were going on and the watchmen were kind enough to have a free run of the place. That walk around school on the 9th of May healed me. A lot of confusion, wounds and regrets melted away.

My school was initially meant to be a school for poor Europeans and had a very post Victorian design and legacy. The school was dark and cool. Not a soul around. As I entered the first floor corridor, a tingling sensation that comes with bottled emotions exploding overwhelmed me. Memories of far ago started running towards as if it was suddenly lunch break and the whole corridor was teeming with seven year olds. I joined in the 2nd std. I vividly remember 3 incidents of my first day at CCS:
1) I entered the girls bathroom.
2) I got my chair taken away when I entered class and plump I was on the floor.
3) I was helped up by Mrs. Bhagat - My class teacher and my first crush.

Nothing much changed during the next eight years expect that I never entered the girls toilet again.

My first class was just as I remembered it. The furniture was from the lands of Lilliput. The 2nd and 3rd floor evoked very similar memories. The staff rooms, the computer lab and everything deserted. But wherever I looked, I saw tons of people. Wherever I looked, I saw me - in different stages of childhood. White stained shirt, dirty white pants and a crooked green tie. All those regrets of having a below par school life washed away like the tide washes away things written in sand. I realized that I am what I am because of each and every event that happened in my life. The person that is me (whatever is me) is because of each second that I lived. If my school life was any different, I wouldn't have been me. That walk through empty corridors taught me never to regret even a second. Never to regret events that have gone past. Each and every second is a brick on which we stand.
I remembered how I used to fly out of the house with socks in my pocket, tie around my ear and toast in my mouth because the bus had arrived. I remember a large cock called Mr. Khan chasing the living daylights out of me. I remembered going over a broken wall with friends to get ice cream. We also used to search for stone age tools at a deserted corner in school. Things came flying at me with every step. Lots had changed in the school but the aura hadn't. Endless memories that would make this a very long blog indeed snapped playfully at my feet. The silent school and its deserted corridors whispered : "Good to have you back, Mr Chatterjee, things were not so bad was it? Dont' always trust your memory. Face your past and walk into it, the minuscule specks of bad times will fade away and all that you will see is the beautiful colours on the canvas. Your Alma matterS, always."
That was the lesson I got, the final lesson from my school, seven years after leaving it. Life is beautiful - change your vision.