5. Backdoor entry, anyone?

On Saturday nite when Jia was with her boyfriend, he expressed his desire to try anal sex with her. She wasn't sure how to react cause she didn't want it and it disappointed her that the guy was so awesome in every way and this would rock their relationship. When she met her friends on Sunday, she asked them how they handle it and After talking to them, felt She just had to write about it. Most men it seemed, did fantasize about it, thanks to porn movies and the likes, the fact that the man would feel more tightness and thrust and the general taboo surrounding it. It just feels like a "why not try this too" thing, and the porn shows portray it as very pleasurable and easy without the use of any lubricants and condoms. Butt sex can cause a lot of infections to both partners and should be done with a condom and a lot of silicon based lubrication, Not to mention that it must be done with complete consent since the muscles need to be relaxed, otherwise it can loosen the anal sphincter and can tear the anal mucosa making it easier to transmit STDs. Though a lot of Indian men fantasize about it, few get around to expressing the desire to their partners, sometimes thus resulting in extra marital affairs. Of those who do let their partners know in some way, not all get a positive response. Of the couples who finally decide to get with the program, maybe because the girl just wants to please her man as very few Indian girls actually want to do it, few couples really succeed. And so even though Jia dreaded the conversation, she knew what she had to do and she broke up with Karan even though she was beginning to fall in love with him, lest the back door sex become a reason for infidelity in the relationship.

3. Wedding First Night Circus

Last week, Jia met with her best friend Ram who recently got married. Just like there's a 'holy time' picked out to tie the wedding knot,  it seems they are also given an auspicious time to make love for the first time as man and wife. Everyone in India is considered to be a virgin before marriage and She wondered how far that is actually true. She suggested to Ram that he have it arranged in a honeymoon suite in a hotel but he said his wife Sita preferred it her's or Ram's parents' house, as is the tradition. So it got arranged in Rams parents' house (where he lives, as most of us live with our parents in India) and his parents picked their own room for it. Jia wondered why parents usually did that?  wasn't it completely embarrassing? She wondered what the mother would think when she saw the bed sheets the next morning, Or when she went back to sleep in her bedroom the next night. Would the thought that 'my son and his bride had sex for the first time on this very bed' give her better sleep in the night? Geez. Jia went over to Mohini's house the next day to ask her first night experience. "Oh god , dont remind me of the horror. The auspicious time was given to be 10 days after the wedding just cos the earlier muhurat was clashing with my cousin's wedding and my family insisted on being around for the wedding night. Don't ask me why. I hAd to sleep with my mother in law till then , can you imagine? And this fAct of the date being 10 days later,  my mother whispered to me in my ear during the wedding ceremony just after my husband finished tying the knot around my neck. All of the days prior to the wedding , my parents and other relatives involved in the wedding arrangements were discussing the issue in private when I wasn't around or if I was , they would ask me to leave the room because they had something important to discuss. Why the discreetness? Because they were too embarrassed to tell me when I should lose my virginity? Or because I'm a child and matters like this cannot be discussed Infront of children although when I'm suddenly pushed into a room with my groom it will miraculously dawn upon me how to have sex? Well my mother in law evidently was too embarrassed to tell her son about it, so left the poor guy to assume in his own head that on the wedding night he would be allowed to sleep with me. Hah! Anyway on D day they made us play silly games like passing a pan from his mouth to mine Infront of an audience, and when the time came to close the door , my father in law kept looking at us and laughing his ass off. Just When we thought everything was behind us and finally got into bed, we started to itch all over. The stupid flowers with which they decorated the entire bed and room seemed to have caused an allergic reaction and we ended up spending the entire night having to apply antiseptics and cleaning the room."

6. The Facebook heartbreaker

When Rishi and Jia caught up on wednesday at " Beyond coffee ", the coffee and hookah lounge, Rishi gave Jia his sister's wedding invitation card, and when she asked about how the arranged marriage girl search was going for him, he ranted his displeasure on how his facebook page seemed to be lowering the chances of him getting good prospective bride matches. He told her the first thing a person who gets an arranged marriage proposal nowadays does, is look up their Facebook page. If the girl or guy in question was'nt good looking, or seemed to have questionable pictures of maybe with a cigarette /glass of alcohol/ an unrelated person of the opposite gender hugging them ,he/she is discarded as not good marriage material and the marriage proposal is turned down. Not just that, they seemed to be spreading the word of this absurd inference to the rest of their friends and considering gossip spreads like wildfire, the marital prospects for the person are reduced considerably. When Jia met with Sita that evening and told her about Rishi's issue, Sita told her that she had a similar experience when her parents were looking for matches for her before she married Ram. She and her parents liked another guy's match and Sita and the guy started to speak with each other regularly, getting to know each other day by day till she opened up her heart to him completely, after which one day the guy suddenly called off the marriage saying she should be careful what kind of an image she's portraying to people through the pictures on her facebook page where she had her hands on her MBA guy friends' shoulders and seemed to be partying hard. Jia and Sita agreed it was a good thing the match broke off anyway cos that guy seemed like an idiot and Ram just happens to be her dream guy. Nevertheless, poor guy Rishi now is very careful about what kinda stuff is up on his facebook page, lest he stay unmarried for the rest of his life! ;)

4. Is choosing your life partner your choice?

Looking at most of her friends getting married, Jia was amazed at how people find their life partners; whether by arranged marriage or by love marriage. Many friends were having arranged marriages and she'd been with them throughout their search for the perfect person. It seemed that finding the right guy became increasingly difficult From the time girls crossed the 25 years of age barrier. The average age for a woman to get married here is 22 and the average age for a guy to get married is 26! Considering the girl is almost always younger than the guy, once she crosses 26, she's registered in almost every matrimony site there is in India, not to mention that every single person she knows would also be dedicatedly on the lookout for her potential soulmate. Like her friend Priya commented  'the good guys simply get taken when they're still in college by the sensible girls'. It was obviously easier for the guys coz the girl can be any number of years younger to him, but for a girl the guy has to be older, so the older she gets, the fewer her options get. When Jia asked her 25 year old guy friends why they don't indulge in wooing a girl and getting married, they simply said they crossed the age for doing that, that now they are just too lazy to do the whole drill, they'd rather just get married via arranged marriage. This sounded more like a south Indian and conservative approach. north indians have examples of finding their life partners even at 28 or 29. even in western countries theres no age bar for dating and finding your life partner. So why do guys here not want to look out for potential life partners? Especially the businessmen. the ones in corporate offices still seem to have a little bit of energy left in them to do so. is it because businessmen come across less prospective people even though they attend a lot of social gatherings? Or the corporate world has a more college feel to it? In any case, people's patience to date seems to go down with age, atleast in Hyderabad. Maybe its more to do with pleasing your family by giving them the choice to select your soul mate?

2. Contraception Confusion

At the get-together on friday night at " N Grill " restaurant, Jia and her friends decided to probe into the various methods of birth control each of them had adopted. It all started when they were having dinner and Preety's phone alarm went off. When asked if it was her cue to go to sleep, she answered that it was a reminder for her to take her pills she had recently started on. Mohini suggested that it was not a good idea, saying her husband is a doctor and he gave a no-no to pills. When Preety said the pills were giving her acne, weight gain and mood swings and asked for a better contraceptive method, everyone looked around the room and realised each of them had their own different coping strategies to this contraception issue. Pooja and her boyfriend it seems use the pulling-out method. But dosent that have a high failure rate, especially if the guy cant control himself? What if he's stressed that day or the girl is really sexy? How would this work??? But when Pooja suggested condoms, Preety said it gave her pain and that she has to use a numbing ointment with the condom everytime. Hmmm isnt that why lubricated condoms exist? Or isnt that good enough a solution? Jia suggested the use of gynaecologists recommended Xylocaine 2% gel to numb the pain; and a water based lubricant called K-Y jelly for easier penetration. Injection shots were suggested that would keep conception at bay for 3 months or so. Nina said she took the 'morning after pill' and still got pregnant(she has a baby to testify it...ahem). The copper T Intra Uterine insert apparently was voted a popular choice, though Mohini noted that her aunt got pregnant and delivered a baby even inspite of it... she apparently fell in the 1% failure rate category. And like any contraceptive, it has its side effects. Abstinence would lead to frustration and extra marital affairs. While counting the menstrual cycles and avoiding the central week is a good precautionary method to practice contraception, (though it works only for those women having regular periods), the irony of it all?.....The exact opposite of that calculation is used for calculating ovulation dates and getting pregnant! It amused Jia's mind how all through college people try so hard to avoid getting pregnant and when people finally feel its time to have babies, its like a marathon mind boggling mathematical formula....Yikes. While everyone rambled on about diaphragms , tubectomies, spermicidal creams and.......Mohini shut everyone's mouth with the final statement "The husbands can just go in for a vasectomy"!

1. Hug me - not!

So this afternoon when Raj came to " Beans " Coffee and Hookah place to meet Jia, she was faced with a queer dilemma. Upon habit, she would give him a hug as a manner of greeting. {her hugging code:
-A casual hug if it was not a close friend.
-A warm brief hug if it was a friend whom she saw everyday (just another version of saying "Hi").
-A nice tight hug if it was a good friend whom she saw after a long while.}
Now in Hyderabad, some people seem to feel awkward about hugging. Either they dont expect it, but gracefully respond when you initiate a hug; and some others who are used to it it, will respond naturally. But Jia would definitely come across the kind who stand uncomfortably like a rock where it's just her hugging them ; and while she's pulling off from it, she'd wish she were dead rather than face the after embarassment of it.
So when she saw Raj, the knowledge that they were friends prompted her to give him a hug upon his arrival at her house. Then her brain went through a whirlwind of anxious thoughts:
What if he isnt the hugging kind and finds it awkward?
Worse, she remembered Mohini's hubby's words to Mohini - "I dont like you hugging guys.   Even a friendly hug.  Period.  I dont understand why people need to hug at all in the first place".(Raj was married, so maybe he held the same opinion regarding women?)
And the kicker - Jia's friend Jeev told her once that she would never hug a guy cause she could never imagine her b**bs coming in contact with any other guy's chest except the man that she would marry!! Now this brought a totally new angle to her way of looking at plain ol' happy friends hugging.
So her head went like , "Is that what runs in a guy's mind when he hugs? Does he rate your b**bs on a scale of 1 to 5 or so? Damn." Fearing the fate of hers, and not wanting to go through the pressure of racking the rust in her brain for the sake of whether or not she should go through with a 'Hi there hug', she simply chose to just say 'hey' from a distance and protect herself from the potential life threat a hug may have caused.