The question in the title of my lecture, to sex or not to sex, is a very old debate in Indian culture, and it's still with us. In a way the question is artificial, setting up an illusion of choice, in a culture where the sexuality of any given individual is still communally held to a great degree.
Even surrounded as we are by the myths of individually-driven sexuality that permeate American culture, the power imbued by active sexuality, whether good or bad, is very resonant, very real, and very much keyed into the role plays we engage in as members of Indian culture, as potent in its manifestation on the ascetic end of the spectrum as the erotic.
In other words what I'm trying to say is that in my mind, without a doubt, Indians are among the most sex-obsessed people on this earth. And one's sexual control, or permissions, or dominations, or submissions, exert power over all the other areas of our lives. This is why I work constantly with the metaphors of sexuality. In dealing with sex, I am dealing with issues of intimacy, closeness, touching and physical contact, and through that I access issues of power.
Indians are really averse to touching-- I don't know if this has registered consciously in your minds. I was just beginning a slow process of discovery around this issue when bam! a catalyst fell into my lap in my late 20's that quickly brought me around to a veritable goldmine of perception. And the catalyst? A complex Russian Jewish man and my marriage to him.
They say that the best way to get to know a culture is to take a lover from inside it. Well, my twist on that is, in order to get to know your own culture really really well, you need to take a lover from way outside it, and then just learn to observe yourself. Suddenly you are the guinea pig, the white mouse, the test subject; suddenly it's very clear which parts of you are Indian and in what way, as is the lie of even assuming that you are different from your parents, and the truth of finding out how tightly wound your molecules, your tissues, your nerves are around the core that is your Indianness. And at this point you either perish from overload, or you attain a sense of humor of nirvanic proportions.
So what have I learned? Well, you can judge for yourselves from the following examples:
Event No. 1 David and I are in New York, attending the panel discussion of an Indian filmmaker friend, Indu Krishnan. So of course there are a zillion Indians there, and everyone's hanging around in the lobby afterwards, talking... and David comes up and puts his arm around me...something he does all the time. But it feels wrong, and I move his arm off. This happens a couple more times, where I shrug his arm off, so finally he pulls me aside and says quite fiercely-- what's wrong? Don't you love me anymore? And I look at him like he's crazy, and wonder why he's creating a big drama when we're in a public place...
And then it dawns on me... we are caught up in a major cross-cultural misunderstanding. As much as I love being touched by him, the fact that I'm surrounded by all these Indians makes it uncomfortable for me, because my well-honed Indian empathy, grooving in a continuous, unconscious feedback loop, signals to me that it is uncomfortable for THEM-- they don't even have to say anything--I know I'm 'doing the wrong thing' by being intimate in a public place.
Luckily I get it, just in time to avert major hurt and anger. I clarify what is going on. David relaxes. I relax. Actually, I'm elated at this sudden stroke of genius, and the doors of perception begin to open a little. My husband's doors of perception open a bit faster, and he is utterly delighted at having lucked into one of my major buttons, something he can really push to great effect. Pushing buttons is second nature to him...
From that time on, any time we see an Indian in public, David grabs me, saying"Quick! Kiss me! There's an Indian watching."
Event number 2. David and I are out to dinner for the very first time with my two sisters, and David's youngest child, who was 9 at the time. We've finished dinner and we're outside on the sidewalk. Without being prompted, David's son throws his arms around my sisters and hugs and kisses them good night. David follows suit. My sisters and I are left standing there, looking at each other. In that deadly awkward silence, the 9 year old says,"What are you standing around for? Aren't you going to kiss good night?" We're not used to such behavior, unless greeting each other after months or years away, but it's okay, after all we are related. So we kiss goodnight. It felt odd at the time, but six years later, let me tell you, kissing good night is second nature to us.
Event number 3. David and I are at a benefit concert featuring Zakir Hussain and the Rhythm Experience. The concert is being held in an ashram. Even though we've paid good money for the show, since it's an ashram, we have to sit on the floor. Sitting cross-legged on the floor is not for everyone. So David lies down on his side, and since I usually need a backrest, I lean back against him for support, which occasions some nice cuddles-- mind you, we're with friends, so nothing obscene is going on.
This ashram guard comes up behind David and taps him on the shoulder. He says, I'm very sorry sir, but the ashram policy is No Intimacy Allowed. David says, Excuse me? We're married. The guard repeats himself. Sorry, sir, no intimacy allowed.
We've come for the concert; to us it's coincidental that it's set in an ashram. The security guy is deadpan, like a cop but with gentler tones. David is livid. He looks like he's going to sock the guy any second. They go outside and have a talk, and I can hear David's raised voice. But he's just a security guard, doing his job. This may be the Bay Area, but the ashram is still Indian...You don't show intimacy in public.
Event No. 4 We're standing at the Dabolim airport in Goa, waiting to catch our plane. We have a couple of hours to kill, so we watch the people standing around-- Goan families greeting friends and relatives as they step off the plane, others sadly saying goodbye . Suddenly we are astonished at what we are observing-- Goans hug and kiss hello and goodbye. Everyone kisses everyone. Men to men, women to men, women to women, youngsters to adults. No reserve, no coyness, no exceptions. Everyone kisses everyone, and we're still in India! Awesome.
I grew up in an Indian family ruled by all the usual norms: appropriate ways to dress, behave, speak, act, touch-- in public, with guests, strangers, servants, with my own body. In other words I was raised a perfectly normal repressed Indian woman.
The one radical difference in my upbringing was being empowered in the area of communication: starting around the age of 11, I received extensive training in talking about my feelings, how to ask questions of other people's feelings, and how to integrate that information into one's life in a healthy way. All very difficult to do in the Indian setting, where talking openly is taboo, considered extremely disrespectful, with personal information generally used deviously against the fool who revealed it. As an 11 year old, I resisted all this new openness quite thoroughly, as I found it as appalling as being brainwashed, and was convinced this was just another trap set by my mother to humiliate me.
But my mother, with the zeal of the recent convert, forced us children to learn to talk this way. My mother came to the US when we were young and studied Transactional Analysis, a system devoted to bettering interpersonal communication. She wanted to showcase her family as beneficiaries of her newly learned openness, and have us learn to engage in a systematic, untraumatic way of resolving conflicts and empowering ourselves.
The seeds, then, to analyze transactions, which is a heavy part of what I do as a writer, were sown early in my case. As I grew older I realized that my father had undergone intense sensitivity training, and therapy, beginning in the 60's in India, when these strategies were completely alien to the culture. He took that route literally to save his life. In taking apart who he was in certain family transactions, he recreated himself anew.
So, I grew up on the repressed side of the fence, sexually, but I acquired tools for communication. And you know what? It turned out to be a do-able combination, because actually, the communicating, questioning, dialoguing, is really the most important component of this thing we call sex.
In Indian culture, a large component of TALKING is equated with shame. Talking is heavily circumscribed, as it must be, in order to subdue this tool that could bust through hierarchies, roles, self-censorship, control and domination. You're a different kind of Indian once you learn to put words in your mouth, and stop fearing the word, question, statement, argument.
The same with overcoming repressions around sex. The shame associated with sexual issues, the isolation of the topic from other parts of life, the mystification of body parts, actions, pleasure and desire are all pointers to the power of sex as a tool that can bust through those everpresent hierarchies, roles, control and domination. And you become a different kind of Indian once you stop fearing the topic of sexuality.
Once you've got these two components down, you start seeing your parents, your relatives, your culture in a completely different light. And Indian culture is WORTH every additional bit of internal light you can find to illuminate it with. I cannot emphasize to you enough how INTERESTING how exciting and invigorating, I find it to be able to excavate my Indian culture from within. The lessons learned from that on-going process are what drive me as a writer, an activist, and an educator. Thank you.