India in Love

by Ira Trivedi

  The community in Shillong is more ethnically diverse than people imagine. There are all sorts of genes floating around, and it is not uncommon to see brilliant blue eyes, blonde hair, or very fair skin. The British made Shillong their home for over a century; many Khasis have at least one foreign grandparent, usually men who were here with the army and then returned with their ilk once the British left India. During those times, sticking to their beliefs, Khasi women never doubted the legitimacy of their liaisons with British men and looked upon these men as their husbands. Most people I meet in Shillong speak of their foreign ancestry proudly, decorating their living room with photos of their foreign grandparents, yet hardly any of them have ever met them. When I ask if their grandmothers had legally married these men, most of them don’t really know, saying that in Khasi custom marriage on paper doesn’t hold much value. Yet the fact remains that a large number of Khasi children were deserted by their fathers and this has led to many complications in today’s Khasi society.

  I ask Tips about her mother.

  ‘My mom is a strong woman. I look up to her,’ she says speaking of the timid woman with the tired smile and the betel stained teeth who sings Carole King songs, though she doesn’t speak much English.

  ‘Everything that I have done in my life is just to make her happy,’ she says.

  ‘Is she happy?’ I ask

  Tips has a doubtful look on her face. ‘Maybe.’

  Tips tells me about the struggle she went through with her family, and the pain her mother felt when she and Rudy began dating. For all their open-mindedness, what the Khasis seemed to have in common with the rest of their countrymen is a sense of hypocrisy. In Khasi society, an older man being with a younger woman is not uncommon, yet people gossiped when Tips and Rudy got together, calling Tips a ‘slut’ and chastising Rudy for being with a younger woman even though several of them have similar age differences in their relationships.

  ‘I guess that’s one of the downsides of being a clan. People love gossiping about each other and it permanently damaged my mother who cares so much about society and reputation,’ said Tips dolefully.

  She shrugs off her sadness and says she thinks Rudy was a godsend. In Rudy, she saw the father that she never had, and she was immediately attracted to him, despite the twenty-one-year age difference and the fact that he was married with four children. It was Rudy who introduced her to the Blues, through which she found a way of letting go.

  ♦

  When Rudy speaks of his ex-wife, he lowers his voice, out of respect to the deceased. His face suffuses with grief, and he tells me that he tried his best to hold the marriage together, and he was always a good father to his children.

  Rudy was not deeply in love with Aarti when he married her. He had only known her for two months, and had married her because she was pregnant. Even though Aarti and he didn’t have much in common in terms of family or interests, it seemed to him the right thing to do. Aarti quickly converted from her Seng Khasi religion to Catholicism, so that Rudy and she could marry in church. Aarti never liked Shillong; she preferred the buzz of a big city like Bangalore, where she had lived before they were married. She regretted the marriage, but had little choice but to marry the father of her unborn child. With Rudy away on tour with his band Mojo, Aarti resorted to alcohol, a problem that spiralled out of control, and to which she eventually lost her life. They were married for ten years and had four children together, after which they divorced. Aarti died years ago of alcohol poisoning, about the time that Tips and Rudy met.

  ‘Reincarnation is as important for the living as it is for the dead. I think of this line when I think of Tips. When everything in my life was so dark, like an angel, she walked into my studio, and I fell in love,’ says Rudy.

  ‘I guess we all have our blues. I have my blues, she has her blues, we even have our blues together, and that is what makes us sing,’ he adds with a sad smile.

  The next time I meet Tips, we are outside the hospital. It looks like she may have drunk too much. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her eyes are tinted crimson. She stares at me with a sort of benign intensity, face clammy, hands folded across the chest, head bowed as if paying homage to something. Tips is at the hospital to meet her elder brother, who has been in and out of hospitals and rehab centres for the past five years. He has been an alcoholic for almost half his life and is now dying of cirrhosis of the liver. She doesn’t blame her brother for being an alcoholic, it helped him deal with the pain of their childhood. She too could have easily become an alcoholic but was saved because of her music and Rudy.

  Tips has had a difficult childhood and has deep scars to show, but she is not the only one. Much of Shillong is mired in confusion, and as this idyllic place opens up to the world, there is a violent clash of cultures, within and outside. The shift from their indigenous beliefs to Christianity may have been skin-deep for people of this region, but it seems to me that the current shift—to a modern, consumerist culture—is the more deep and soul-shifting one. As the world changes, revolving on its axis, there are things that we take away from it, things that we hold on to, and things that we let go of. While we wait for this age to set, I can only wonder what the repercussions for a generation, for a nation, and for the world beyond will be.

  EPILOGUE

  A TALE OF TWO REVOLUTIONS

  My assumption, when I first set out to write this book, was that India was going through a sexual revolution. The change was all around me, on billboards, on television screens, in chains of coffee shops and on college campuses. Instead, what I discovered was that there was not one, but two revolutions coursing through India’s social landscape—the sex revolution, and the love revolution.

  I had hypothesized that sex, love, and marriage were all part of one revolution; after all these three often do come together. I had expected to see trends, to cull statistics to reach neat conclusions—and to wrap everything up with a pretty red bow. This was not so easy. Every time I was close to cementing a theory, something, or someone would come along and dislodge it. It seemed that for every truth, there was an equal and opposite untruth. Through the course of my research, even my fundamental premise for writing the book—that India was going through a sexual revolution—was tested.

  I referred to experts—academics, social workers, lawmakers, government officials and several others—to make sense of what was happening. From Shiny to Dr Kothari, from my grandfather’s living room to dorm rooms in Bangalore, as I traversed India, I realized that there was much more at play.

  Though the participants and forces behind both revolutions were the same, they were happening separately, in spite of each other, but also as a result of each other. It was a bit like that well-known chicken-and-egg question—which came first: the love revolution or the sex revolution? In India, it seems, it is all happening contemporaneously.

  As I expected, young people are having premarital sex, same sex relations have been decriminalized and re-criminalized, more people are defiantly declaring their sexual preferences, and women are demanding their sexual rights. Essentially, sex is coming out of the bedroom and on to the streets. And the love revolution has led to the break-up of the arranged marriage as more people decide to marry for love rather than community or caste. Priya and Kartikey, and the numerous other couples I interviewed are examples of the love revolution. They fell in love, and married against the wishes of their families and communities, but they did not believe in premarital sex and consummated their love only after marriage.

  Then there are people who are part of the sex revolution. People like Shammi and Suganda who had a traditional arranged marriage, but took the renegade route of having sexual affairs while remaining tied to their tradition. Or others like Prayag and his girlfriends, who were having sex before marriage, but who may not be able to handle the emotional baggage that comes with the physical aspect. So while all these people may not be (at the moment) part of one revolution, they could be part of another. It is i
nevitable though that at some point in the future these two revolutions will meet.

  Another important point that I discovered for both revolutions is that they were happening at different speeds in different ways across the country. So we may have an upper-middle-class Delhi gal who dresses as she wants, has sex with whom she wants and marries whomever she wants. Then we may have another young woman, who lives right next door to her, who may not have any of these choices. She has been sequestered at home her entire life, and will be expected to marry someone of her parents’ choice. All this while, she may be having a secret affair online, but no one will ever know. Here, we have one young woman who is in the advanced stage of both revolutions, and then another, who is part of the first stages.

  The love revolution will lead to the breakdown of the traditional arranged marriage. This is significant, because it also means the breakdown of the joint family, of caste and community identity, and as divorce rates skyrocket, perhaps also of marriage itself. The switch from arranged to love marriage will be a slow, gradual one, but it is happening nonetheless, particularly in urban India. The India of ten years ago was substantially different from the India of today, and the India a decade from now will continue on the path that we have paved.

  The sex revolution does not just concern the physical act of sex. It is about changing laws, about loosening censors, and about more sexual liberty. It is about seeing women choosing to wear what they want and about accepting gays in our communities. It is about the burgeoning prostitution industry and pornography. It is about escaping hypocrisy and realizing we are making change happen. Above all, it is about exposing an entire generation to a heavily sexualized culture which is seeping into their lives.

  The multifaceted fallout of sexual liberation, a lot of which are already manifesting in ugly ways, will be unwanted teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and infections, the continuation of female foeticide, disturbing sexual violence and harassment that we have already been witness to, all of which will tear India apart. Until the state provides adequate infrastructure to support the sexual revolution, we will continue to see and read hackneyed stories of violence against women. And, while laws may change and be strengthened, mindsets will have to follow suit. It is our moral imperative as Indians to support this change.

  WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTION IS IT?

  To understand more about what the consequences of India’s revolution will be, it is crucial for us to understand what kind of revolution we are in the midst of. Is it like the love and sexual revolutions of the West, or is it something different?

  I argue that India is going through a different kind of revolution, one that can be compared to China’s in many ways. In the West, the love and sex revolution took the linear route—first came the love revolution, in which family and community involvement in the marital choices of young people diminished, and then came the sex revolution, whose hallmarks included multiple sex partners, the celebration of nudity, full sexual expression no matter what one’s sexuality or sexual orientation was, the rejection of all forms of censorship264 and reliable contraceptives.

  In his classic work The History of Sexuality, philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault differentiates between two types of erotic cultures. An Eastern culture is endowed with an ars erotica(the erotic art), where sexuality is seen as way of life, and is part of the soul, whereas Western societies like America, England and France see sex as scientia sexualis (a scientific act) and treat it as a mere biological act. According to Foucault’s theory, historically, India and China have had similar views on sex. Also, like in India, in China, ‘the pendulum swung unevenly, from unprecedented sexual liberalism under the Tang Dynasty to repressive orthodoxy under the Qing Dynasty, with lots of back and forth in between. Puritanism reached its peak in the Mao era, when prostitution was all but eradicated along with almost all public references to sex.’265 China’s sexual revolution began in the early 1980s with Deng Xiaoping’s policy of ‘reform and opening up’.

  Today, the Chinese revolution, like the Indian one, is an urban phenomenon, and has left the countryside relatively untouched. As Richard Burger writes in his book Behind the Red Door, in China, most twenty-somethings have moved from villages to find work in urban areas. Tens of millions of young migrant workers who move to towns and cities often frequent internet cafes where they use social media to find dates and make friends. This, amongst many other reasons of a burgeoning sexualized culture, sounds eerily similar to India’s revolution.

  Since we have historically and culturally had similar experiences with sex, and our current revolutions have similar characteristics, it makes sense to see what China’s biggest problems are to forecast our own. What I see as both China’s and India’s biggest problem is the looming gender imbalance. For all the dramatic changes in China’s sexual landscape since the 1970s perhaps nothing will have a more dramatic effect than this. This imbalance has led to a jump in crime and violence in both countries already. Some Chinese sex experts predict that this trend will be accompanied by a significant rise in HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. A high male to female ratio also increases the chances of a woman becoming pregnant before marriage. Some say that these bare branches (like those discussed in the ‘Dark Side’ chapter) will turn to homosexuality because of a lack of other options.266

  The gender imbalance also affects the love revolution. After years of research, Dr Robert Epstein, a Harvard University psychologist and professor, has concluded that a higher number of males than females leads to society becoming more conservative. In this case, arranged marriage will prevail, and all the positives of the love revolution will go out of the window.

  Society benefits from the revolution of the kind that India is going through. There is greater gender equality, more freedom for women, an increasing culture of respect and tolerance in marriage, and the waning of homophobia. Yet no revolution comes without its fair share of casualties, and it is important to address the revolution’s excesses, the worrisome side effects and the constant tug of war between past and future.

  THE ROAD AHEAD

  Most likely, the struggle will continue. As India’s past pushes against its present, there is an eternal war between social conservative prudes and a new generation of Western-influenced young people. In the present moment, thanks to globalization and technology, I see the libertine making his way to the top, but that could easily turn, like it has before. As economist Joan Robinson famously said, ‘Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true’.

  All we can do in a constantly changing India is to brace and prepare ourselves. Sex education in our country remains woefully inadequate, our government has to rid itself of its squeamish views and tell it the way it is. We desperately need more support systems—legal, mental, social, etc. or else young people like Aasimah will keep falling through the gaps.

  India has the chance to overcome her past prejudices and recognize sexual and marital freedom as a fundamental human right. We may never again be a society devoted to sexual practices as we once were, but we are on our way—however slowly and treacherously—to greater sexual openness, tolerance and freedom.

  On a personal note, this book was transformational in more ways than one, and through the stories that I captured, I learnt much about myself. By spending so much time in different parts of India, with so many different kinds of people, I discovered a fundamental change that India was going through. I also changed as a writer—I pushed myself to become a better storyteller to convey the strength, power and emotion behind these stories.

  I also learnt that the apple never falls far from the tree. India has a strongly-set culture of family and kinship, and it is impossible to remove it all, in one, two or even three generations. Society is changing, and a lot of our old ideals are being questioned. Though young India has made new India their own through a multiplicity of circumstances, they don’t realize how much like their parents they really are. This is what
I noticed in the stories of the hundreds of people that I interviewed, the ones that I told in this book, and even in my own. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see the face of my mother. Sometimes when I hear myself talking, I hear the words of my father. And I realize that no matter how hard I try, there is only so much that I can change, only so different that I can be.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book could not have been written without the voices of those who chose to talk to me. First and foremost I would like to thank all of those people: Kapil, Priya, Shiny, the Love Commandos, Prayag, Tips, Rudy, Gopal Suri, and so many more who bravely shared their stories with me. I also want to thank all those who were my guiding lights along the way—Wendy Doniger, Sudhir Kakar, James McConnachie, Stephanie Coontz, Kong Pat, Kailash Chand, and the many other experts who shared their knowledge with me.

  David Davidar lent India in Love his unconditional support, editorially and otherwise. Thank you for giving me this chance. There were others too who put their minds, energy and hearts into it—Jean Kim, Simar and Pujitha.

  I would never be a writer if it weren’t for my family. I thank my parents; Ishani, Anjani and Anant Vijay. I especially want to thank Anjani Trivedi Kotwal, who did a fantastic job with her contribution of The Dark Side. I am so proud of her sparkling journalistic talent. Maybe Whelp had something to do with her scintillating debut, so a shout out to him too.

  Then there are all my friends who supported the writing of this book. The lovely Poonam Saxena who supported the idea from the start, the Klein family in Pondicherry—Dimitri, Emilie, Mitya, Tara and Zen, who provided me with the space and love to finish up my draft. My friends and family members who came along with me on the ride—Ritu Pande in Bangalore, Ghazala and Aftab Laiq Ahmed in Bhopal, Seema Gokhale in Shillong, and the many many others around the country.