What Happened to My Girlfriend? And Other Key Sex Questions

For the last couple months The New Indian Express has been publishing a column called "(Queer)ies: Your Personal Sex Advice Kiosk" in the Saturday supplement Zeitgeist. It's India's first serious sex advice column (that I'm aware of, anyway) and adds a few raised eyebrows to the national discourse on intercourse. The column in the paper is edited down for content, but the archive online is raw, uncut and uncensored. Which is to say, much more fun to read.

And who is behind this, you ask? Why none other than my fabulous roommate Padma, founder of the Shakti Center and all around marauding killer bee in high lace-up boots. A couple weeks ago, a question she answered about women masturbating drew the ire of readers from across South India. Funnily enough, the same question about men masturbating went unchallenged. Coincidence, or conspiracy? You decide.

I am a 19-year-old girl. Madam, I am addicted to masturbation twice in a week. I don’t know whether is it good or not, but it is uncontrollable. Will this affect my health?
–Is This Weird?

Twice a week?! Frankly, I don’t think you’re masturbating enough. Masturbation is a very empowering sexual act: it can help you become better attuned to your body, your desires, and your fantasies, and all in a safe and non-threatening way. Get in there, get busy, and stop worrying about it. And no, masturbation will not affect your health. [link]

The response to this by a "doctor", is simply smashing. Check it out.

Ant Goddess and the Sponge of Doom

There have always been ants in our apartment. When we first moved in, near-microscopic red ants scurried across the kitchen counter looking for dropped morsels of food. Winter came and they slightly larger black ants took over until they were eventually replaced by an even larger variety. Now, in the heat of the summer the small red ants are back and they have managed to find their way into every Tupperware barrier we set up against them. They've crawled into the refrigerator, into the rice, and invaded our stash of walnuts. If we don't scrub down the counters after making tea a hundred ants will suck on the residue where sugary water dripped over the side of the cup.

Over the last three years my wife has sealed the cracks in the walls with duct tape and poured eucalyptus oil into their hideouts. She has sprayed their dens with insecticide and sponged away countless ant carcasses from our counter tops. But the ants keep coming back. There are more now in our apartment than ever before. But something that happened over the weekend has made me question her fundamental relationship with this apartment's most numerous inhabitants.

After years of countless ant murders and countermeasures my wife went into the kitchen to find a herd gathered around a dollop of honey. She says that there were at least 50 of them in a circle "lapping up the nectar like antelopes at a waterhole". There is nothing in the world more pleasing to an ant than honey. Rather than her normal reaction of immediately scrubbing the honey and ants into the sink, she bent down over them for a better look. Sensing her gaze--and impending doom--the ants scattered in every direction. They abandoned their sugary stash and ran for the cracks where they came from.

This is unusual behavior. I have to emphasize that that ants didn't run after she had begun to squish their bodies into the counter top with her finger one at a time, or even after preparing a sponge in the sink. They ran after they saw her looking at them. This leads me to believe that after years of wiping out this same colony of ants, they are beginning to respect and fear my wife (as she is their appointed exterminator). She is their fickle and unruly goddess.

We see them as pests that pollute our food and occasionally bite us with their envenomed pincers. But from an ant's perspective we are giving them mixed signals. One day we fill the counters with tasty food droppings, glittering in honey and flower particles that feed and grow their colony. The next day she removes the offering and eliminates the workers that they send out to collect the food. She poisons their colony and wipes them from the face of the earth. She is both the source of their sustenance and the agent of their demise.

Back in the safety of their colony, the ants must gather around their queen and ask for her to interpret the various moods of my fickle wife. Is she an agent of good, or one of evil? Is there a way to appease her, or are they doomed to her random acts of kindness and murder? Right now, the counters are clean, and the ants are likely preforming elaborate rituals to honor my wife and forestall her wrath.

My wife is the ants' goddess. Right now she could be preparing the sponge of doom, or a cup of tea with honey.

photo by Binux on Flickr

The Shakti Center talks about Sex

Sex is taboo in Chennai. Like any place in the world everyone here is having sex (well most people, anyway) but to admit it out loud makes people angry. A couple years ago the actress Kushboo said that unmarried women should have access to birth control and get occasional AIDS tests and was attacked by local politicos for "dishonoring tamil women". And let's not even get started about homosexuality. When sun goes down Marina and Elliots beaches turn into brothels and married men cruise for sex in just about every public park. But the next day no one says a word. But that could change.

The Shakti Center is addressing rift between what people talk about, and what goes on behind doors. The group's philosophy is simple: provide a space for people to talk about sex in the city and things will start to get better. To do that Shakti has a lot of projects in the works. There are host free weekly films--ranging from Tamil flicks to the latest Quentin Tarrantino release--followed by discussion groups. They also run sex-ed curriculums in local schools, have a blog, a zine, and resources for people to use to develop other dialog fostering projects. They're open to anything that will get people talking. Eventually the blog will become a repository for stories from local people to voice their own experiences negotiating the rough cultural waters around sexuality and gender.

Padma Govindan, my wife, is a founding member of the group and is eagerly looking for other people to come in and help out. Just about everyone in Chennai has a story about coming to terms with their own sexuality. There are strong opinions about who should and should not be having sex and what it means to be gay (or transgender) in a city that won't think out of a straight box.

If enough people get talking, maybe the next time someone like Kushboo suggests people should use condoms people will listen rather than threaten to throw her in jail.

For more information about the Shakti Center, or to get involved, go to the website http://www.shakticenter.org

Stree Sharira

This week the Prakriti Foundation is holding a conference called "Stree Sharira" with speakers coming in from all over the world to talk about sexuality, reproductive health and pleasure. Yesterday the Tamil film actress Kushboo had an intimate conversation with audience about her experience with government censorship of her films and how some relatively innocuous statements she made a few years ago on premarital sex drew fire from the state's highest offices.

The conference continues today and tomorrow at Anokhi Cafe on Chaimiers Road if you find you have free time and want to attend. This afternoon Padma is going to speak on her impressions of the notorious lesbian flick "Girlfriend".

I took some photos yesterday and have posted a gallery of some of the dance performances and speakers.

Above: Kushboo talks with the audience before ducking out of the hall where a waiting mob of autograph seekers waved crumpled pieces of paper and pens in her direction.

Painting: This painting was hanging on the wall behind the speakers at the conference. I can't tell if she is holding a piece of string or a very long sperm. I think the artist left it ambiguous on purpose.

She's Still, She's Still Padma from the Block

The Indian blog world just got a little more crowded, and I'm loving every minute of it. This week on Pass The Roti on the Left Hand Side my favorite desi, Padma Govindan started adding her own leftist thoughts and opinions to their ace team of desi-critics.

Today she's lamenting the CIA-Industrial-Prison complex and the sad fate of an innocent Syrian who was tortured by a Canadian and American coalition of intelligence agencies for ten months before they figured out he was, in fact, the wrong guy.

And yesterday she was examining propper Islamic couture for women as prescribed by the Koran.

And why do we love Padma's postings? Is it only because we burned our fingers over a sacred fire some time last year (before meandering around it seven times), you ask? Well, I admit that speaks favorably for her choice in partners, but would by no means cloud my editorial opinions. Reading her writing is like adding another Salon article every day, the right blend of lefty thinking and moral outrage at the world situation that I just don't get while chasing my own stories of one-eyed children and kidney thieves.