Sex education in Kerala — or how an engineering degree saved my sex life
I was born and raised in Kerala, one of the southernmost states in India. There, as in most other places in the country, marriages are often seen as a social contract granting permission to young couples to have sex, and any systematic form of sex education prior to marriage is taboo.
Devoid of any proper sex education, most Keralite boys and girls turn to anecdotes and raunchy videos to satisfy their curiosity. Even this modicum of education needs to be acquired on the down-low, for fear of adverse judgment by society. I am going to help you visualise this by telling you three stories from my own life, which will hopefully shed some light on why I had to learn whatever I know about sex from my engineering college peer-to-peer LAN. By extension, the logic will apply to most Keralite families, for if my family prides itself on one thing, it is its tendency to regress to the mean.
Year 1995 — age 10 — The Terminator
My dad picked out the Terminator from the local VHS library (remember those black tapes which used to collect fungus?) and brought it home triumphantly so he and I could watch it together. It was meant to be a father son bonding moment over visuals of humans being hunted mercilessly by a sentient robot from the future (cute much?).It was also my first foreign language film. However, proceedings quickly ground to a halt at the scene where Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese have mutually consensual intercourse, a critical and momentous plot twist that leads directly to the birth of the savior of all mankind, John Connor. At the first sight of Linda Hamilton’s nipples, my dad sprang into action, switching off the TV and announcing that this movie was not fit for kids and he would show me a cooler movie the next day. I was left a bit confused. I had never before seen my dad move so fast. And I hadn’t exactly understood what was going on in the movie too.
Year 2000 — age 15 — ‘The Dictionary’
My dad had come to pick me up from school and we were en route home when he suddenly stopped the Bajaj Chetak at a secluded spot about two hundred metres behind our house. He asked me to get off and then parked the scooter. I momentarily suspended my thoughts about getting home quickly, taking a shower and curling up with a good book, and transferred all my attention to my dad. In a grave voice, he announced that he needed to tell me something. In a sudden, breathtaking moment of panic attack, I feared something had happened to my mom. I remember a sudden constriction inside my chest which made it difficult for me to draw breath.
“ I opened your table drawer today to fetch the dictionary” he began. I was confused. Did the dictionary fall on my mom? Webster’s encyclopedic dictionary is not the lightest of books to have fall on you out of nowhere. My dad saw the look of horror on my face, and mistaking it for guilt, soldiered on. “ And I saw the book you had kept hidden behind the dictionary”.
Suddenly, things became clearer. A couple of days ago, a deviant friend had loaned me a slim volume, something that was known in our circles as the “little book”. Basically, it was a cheap edition of a porn booklet, with grainy images of actors doing the doo-doo in a variety of positions.(In the absence of any formal system of sex education, these books served a commendable social cause in the pre internet era.)
I had hidden it temporarily in a place where I thought it would be safe — behind a humongous volume of Webster’s Encyclopaedic dictionary. This was meant to be our master dictionary, to be turned to only when a family member was stumped by a word which could not be resolved by smaller volumes of Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, both of which were available in the house. Given the rarity with which it was ever touched, I assumed my slim book would be relatively safe behind it. Only, I hadn’t accounted for the fact that my dad might suddenly get the urge to expand his vocabulary and go dig up the dictionary. So of course, in short order, he got the urge, reached into the recesses of my drawer, and picked out the bulky volume. And lo, out tumbled the evidence of my straying from the straight and narrow path.
Ordinarily, an exposure like this would have mortified me beyond belief. But compared to the more horrific scenario that my mind had conjured up by then, the accusation of being caught red handed handling sensitive material came as a relief instead. I even smiled a bit. This puzzled my father, who was expecting remorse and apology. “You see, I can understand. I was your age once. I know there are…urges.” He took his time with the word ‘urges’, rolling it around in his mouth as if tasting it before pronouncing it bitter and gracefully spitting it out. “But you should be focusing on your studies at this age. Return this book to whoever gave it to you, and we will speak no more about it. I haven’t told your mom about this”. With that, he clipped his helmet back on, and got back on the scooter. I contritely rode pillion with him, realising that I had just been given THE TALK, but was no more the wiser for having received it. Several questions floated around in my head. For instance, if he had had the urges back when he was my age, what had he done about them? On second thoughts, I decided I didn’t want to know the answer to that particular question. Also, what did the reference to mom mean… was that a veiled threat? And most importantly, what was this dangerous word he was trying to look up in the holy grail of dictionaries?
Year 2013 — age 28 — The Wedding
Fast forward to more than a decade later to the eve of another momentous day in my life; the day before my marriage. I was at home, chatting with my relatives who had all convened to render their best wishes and express their shocked surprise that the little toddler who used to walk around with snot all across his mouth had grown up overnight and was getting married.
In the midst of all this, my dad called me into the garden. I followed him out of the house, and we walked side by side silently for a while. Once we were out of earshot, he assumed a grave expression and gazing far into the distance, cleared his throat and started to speak. “ Errm, mone (son)… appo, bhaviye kurichu alochichittundo ? Alla achanariyam monu ithokke ariyamennu, ennalum onnu veruthe chodichatha”. I replied, “ Ariyam acha”. “ Ok, athu mathi”, he let out an audible sigh of relief. And then leaving me alone in the garden, he marched back in double time.
For those who missed the nuanced father son exchange that just happened, here is the translation with some additional notes supplied by Captain Subtext for easier understanding.
“ Errm, mone (son)… appo, bhaviye kurichu alochittundo ?” — “ Have you thought about the future?”
C. Subtext — This question is intentionally vague. It was designed to cover a range of subjects including career guidance, emotional maturity (or lack thereof), savings, residential security, sex, family planning, where to send the grandkids to school etc. We need to see the context in order to refine the options further. Sandeep’s dad chose the very last day of his bachelorhood to ask him this question and therefore it could only mean that he was enquiring about the extent of his sexual education. Given that he knew that Sandeep knew that he knew that there was never much in the way of sexual education Sandeep could have gotten through any family approved sources, this question is tantalizingly nuanced and rich in its irony.
“Alla achanariyam monu ithokke ariyamennu, ennalum onnu veruthe chodichatha”. — “I know that you are on top of these things, but I still felt the need to confirm that you are good to go”.
C. Subtext — This seemingly innocuous statement is anything but. In a stroke of masterful genius, it not only absolves the dad of any parental sins of omission but also gently reinforces the memory of that book all those years ago, reminding Sandeep that he had had a chance to learn stuff the western way and there should literally be nothing more that he, the dad, need teach him, the son. The question makes the big assumption that Sandeep would not ask any stupid/involved doubts at this eleventh hour.
“Ariyam acha” — “ I am fine dad”
C. Subtext — Sandeep meant to say, “ Please, for the love of God, let us stop this awkward conversation right now. I mean, you can’t even look at me. You are talking to the banana leaf.”
“Athu mathi,” followed by audible sigh of relief — self explanatory.
This was the extent of my sex education. If it were not for the peer-to-peer network that allowed me to download porn during my engineering college days, I would have been one of those young guys queuing up in front of the clinic in a bid to understand what goes where. As is the case with most of my generation in Kerala, my engineering degree saved my sex life.
