A Delhi postcard: Sex, marriage and air-conditioning

By Namratha Krishnamurthy “It’s too hot for sex,” my mother’s best friend complains, gobbling Gol Guppas over lunch. “I come home at night, and my husband is waiting for some action, but all I can do is just plop down on the bed. It’s causing friction in our marriage. I mean, the sex is good, but I’m just tired.” My mother, meanwhile, has lost interest in her friend’s narrative. Anything to do with sex at this time of her life bores her. She is busy contemplating the ills of menopause. These hot flushes…" she sighs, picking at her chowmein, “it’s worst in summer…it’s enough to KILL someone. Oof!” I, too, ponder the injurious effects of the Delhi summer. The enervating commute on DTC buses has made me a victim of heat stroke. As we wait for the bill, I prep myself for the excursion outside. My mother watches me vigorously rub SPF 15 on to my (rather rotund) cheeks, and carefully check that sunglasses, hat, bottles of regular and nimbu paani are all safely sequestered in my voluminous handbag. She idly remarks, “Forget all this work-shirk business, beti, and settle down. It is best in the summer months to be married. The rest of the year, it is not so good — but during the summer, it pays to be a housewife. You can bask in air-conditioned comfort all day…” I grouchily interrupt her. “I also have air-conditioned comfort. My office is air-conditioned.” “Ha! But you can’t lie down in office…I spend the whole day, lying down next to the AC,” my mother explains, convinced that this sole benefit of marriage will persuade me to alter my single status. “Your grandmother and I are both of one mind on this topic only — we will find a working man, from the same background, who has an air-conditioned house.” [caption id=“attachment_27849” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Delhi summer often leads to some unexpected conversations. Tom Shaw/Getty Images”]  [/caption] Knowing my family, I can anticipate that this potential groom will turn out to be a bespectacled, balding nerd, who can barely string a sentence together in the presence of a woman, and worse, is almost certain to be terrible in bed.This constitutes my family’s criterion of eligibility. My mother waits eagerly for my response, hoping that she can finally set the whole family clan in motion to find some such prized match for me. This most recent argument has been the most creative of the various strategies employed by my family to make me acquiesce to wedlock. Exhausted by the heat and the relentless efforts of these matchmaking hordes, I assert one condition: “But he must have a generator to sustain all air conditioning units the whole day long. This thought had been inspired by the recent travails of my cousin. Married to a wealthy investment banker, she was happily basking in full air-conditioned comfort, until a power cut precipitated her labor pains. She delivered a (thankfully healthy) baby girl two weeks early. Moral of story: full power backup is essential in the Delhi summer. My mother plops back, deflated. Where in the world will she find a young man, looking to get hitched, who has enough disposable income to guarantee a fully air-conditioned house, 24X7? More importantly, are the (somewhat feeble) attractions of her daughter sufficient to entice such a rare find? I leave my mother to these reflections, and relieved at having evaded matrimonial clutches, hop onto a DTC bus. My phone rings. It’s a soon-to-be-married cousin, who is turning to me to quell her wedding night jitters. I’ve never seen it," she confesses, in a hushed whisper. I am astounded: “What do you mean you’ve never seen IT? How can you have lived in India without ever seeing a penis!” I see it everyday here, every corner. Men whipping ‘it’ out to deface any public sign, property. Men, standing, squatting, kneeling, their organ spilling it’s contents onto the ground. Men, even, turning towards me (or some other hapless female) and spraying us with their golden shower…men, their flies open and trousers unzipped, gesturing to us to notice their commando ‘status.’ I have seen all shapes and sizes, all castes, colors, and classes. In this alone, have I been blessed with a true democratic vision of my nation. I can imagine my cousin being unacquainted with her own ‘it’, but not with the male member. Her inexperience and lack of knowledge strike me as tragic and even dangerous. My outburst has attracted quite a lot of attention. The plump matriarch sitting next to me, mutters Chi, chi, girls these days! An over-heated malcontent — giant sweat patches stain the armpits of her sari blouse — she fans herself with her pallu, rivulets of sweat streaming down her face. As the bus struggles through jam packed traffic, I think to myself, that perhaps another evolutionary change is required. We, denizens of Delhi, should hibernate through the summer (in air-conditioned crypts), blissfully unaware of rocketing temperatures. My reverie is interrupted, twenty minutes later, when my cell phone rings again. “His name is Rohit,” my aunt informs me, “and he runs a business, selling air-conditioning units and power-generators.” Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea, but what will I do in the winter? Surely, I need a man who also deals in heaters. The truth of the matter is, I don’t want to have an arranged marriage. It is perfectly acceptable for a man entering an arranged marriage to have had ‘prior’ experience, but a woman has to be ‘chaste’ and submissive. I can imagine a family member responding, Men have needs. But what about a woman’s needs? I want to live a sexually liberated lifestyle. Where I have the power to choose who I want to have sex with, when I want to have sex. Don’t get me wrong, I have no real interest in “sleeping around” as disapproving aunties like to put it. But I yearn to live life on the terms I choose, and not be bound by society’s hypocritical notions about female virtue. The bus screeches to a halt. Then again, it’s still too hot for sex.