Man spilling blood in honourable, woman spilling blood is unclean, what logic is that?
I am Rohan. I am nineteen. I am in the second year of my bachelor degree course in engineering in a college near the extreme southern tip of India. My family consists of my father, a retired accountant from the revenue department, my mother, a housewife, and my elder sister. Her name is Sarala, but as I am younger I cannot call her by name. I call her Akka, which in the Tamil language means elder sister. She is 23 years old. After graduation she is at home waiting for marriage.
My story is strange, but I have a niggling suspicion that it is not as unusual as it may seem at first sight. My problem is my sex life—I do not have any. I believe that in Western countries by the time boys or girls graduate from school they have had sexual experiences. Incidentally I used to wonder why leaving school in those countries should amount to graduation whereas in India one graduates only when one acquires a degree like B.A. or B.E. or any other. If they have sex before leaving school I concede that they have the right to call themselves graduates. The chances are that when I acquire my B.E. degree two years from now I may not be a graduate in the Western sense. My case is the common lot of most young men of the middle class in India.
The rich know how to look after themselves. They have their parties where liquor flows freely, and men and women dance and have a good time. They give their children cars with lots of pocket money and leave them more or less to themselves. The poor live in such densely populated localities with several families occupying one room that sleeping floors are crowded. It is easy to have sex in such surroundings. It is the middle classes that have bound themselves hand and foot with stifling rules and prohibitions.
For my part I do the only thing I can do, I fantasise. The object of my fantasies is my sister. My sister is four years and three months my senior in age. She is pretty. Her breasts are big and shapely, and her hips are wide. Her features are such that someone like her must have modelled for the sculptures in our local temple, which incidentally is a famous one. Her nose is straight and sharp, and her eyes large with long lashes. From my seat at the computer I can see her when she is watching TV without her knowledge. At times her face will be serious, and at times she will smile a gentle smile. Her smile is the sweetest I have ever known. I would strip her in my mind. The sari is the first to go followed by the blouse and the skirt. I always teased myself by allowing my sister to be in the bra and knickers for a while. Then off went the bra. The pair of knickers I imagined her wearing is always a bright red one with tiny white dots on it. I have seen all her under garments drying in the clothesline. For some reason the red one is my favourite. Once I remove that I can visualise her naked body in various poses. The pose I like best is the one in which she sits on the kitchen stool with one knee over the other with me watching her from floor level. The partly hidden slit in her vulva always triggers a desire to masturbate that I have never been able to resist.
I have of course never seen her breasts and vulva or even her thighs. But from my extensive knowledge of female external anatomy gleaned from porn sites in the Internet I can fill in the blanks. I know she shaves her pubic hair for once she forgot to take her razor with her when she left the bathroom. Though I had shaved that morning I applied soap to my face and ran the razor on my chin. It was exciting to use the razor that had removed the public hair of my sister. I masturbated there and then.
Now I come to something that is my fancy. The phenomenon of menstruation excites me. I do not know why. I have surfed the Internet for information and I think I know a lot about it. When my sister has her periods I get really sexually aroused. On the first day she visits to the bathroom frequently spending more time than usual. What really makes my penis get hard is the sight of the thin bulge of the cord she wears low down her hips. She must be using it to anchor the pad. I believe that the modern way is to wear internal protection. I have seen advertisements that claim that by wearing such devices women can even swim. My sister either must be old fashioned, or for some other reason prefers external protection.
The orthodox Indian attitude to menstruation infuriates me. For example one classmate tells me that during the periods his sisters cannot enter the kitchen or the puja room because menstruating women are unclean. My family is only partly orthodox for my sister enters the kitchen during her periods, but not the puja room. Not only Hindus but Christians also hold similar views. Sam, my playmate in high school, has told me that his sister refrains from going to the alter to receive communion (which I understand is a ritual in church) when she has her periods. All religions while differing in almost everything else agree that women are inferior to men. One of the tools they use to bludgeon woman to submission is their monthly period.
From the study menstruation in the Internet I know that on the first day of the period along with blood surface cells of the uterine lining form part of the discharge. From day two onwards, for the next two or three days, only blood flow. No one considers blood as anything but pure. Why should women be unclean when they discharge blood? Eradicating the notion that woman are unclean during their periods is an essential step in the campaign for gender equality. I am surprised that even militant feminists have not so far taken up cudgels against this belief.
2
My father after retirement took up a job as accountant to a cloth merchant. Unlike in government service he has to work hard, six days in a week from nine to seven. My mother and her many friends indulge in many activities mostly concerning temple visiting and listening to religious discourses. Afternoon hours she is rarely at home. I usually leave for college at about eight and return in the evening anytime between two and seven. Thus my sister is alone at home on most afternoons. My Akka is waiting for marriage. That is what most girls of the middle class do in small towns like ours. I larger towns and cities many take up jobs till they get married. Her horoscope is with many marriage brokers, and my mother's religious activities centres round seeking God's help for securing a good match for her. To those who do not know our customs I must point out that getting proper match for girls is a major, and very worrisome task for parents.
One afternoon I was home early. I sat at the computer scrolling through my extensive collection of porn images. I had placed my computer in a corner facing away from the wall to ensure secrecy. My sister is usually upstairs after lunch reading novels. Suddenly I got the feeling that I was not alone in the room. I looked back, and there was my sister looking intently at the monitor. I tired desperately to minimise the screen. My hand however was too unsteady to align the cursor.
"No need for that," said Akka, "I have been watching for a while. You must be sick Rohan. Disgusting." My feeling changed suddenly from embarrassment to annoyance.
"How do you think you and I were born? By this same disgusting process," I said. She snorted. "And you are waiting for the day when you can do this same disgusting thing. I too am in the same boat, but for you it is months away whereas I will get my chance may be ten years from now." Suddenly feeling of self-pity smothered me. "Ten years, and you are making a fuss about my watching these photos of others enjoying themselves."
"Those sluts are not enjoying themselves." My sister spoke casually. I was now quite angry.
"Don't call them sluts. They give relief to men like me. They are philanthropists."
"Don't talk rot," said Akka.
"Do you know that your brother is sex starved? Do you know that though he is nineteen he has not so much as touched a woman lovingly? Do you know that in Western countries boys and girls before they leave school have had sex? What of you? You are sex starved too. When I open the novels you read the pages that open out are all about this same disgusting thing. You must be reading it again and again, and surely you are masturbating."
"Rohan you are going too far."
"Sorry Akka. Now excuse me. I have to go to my room. After watching all these pictures I need to get relief. Sorry that I have to talk in this way before my Akka, but I am so full of my sorrows that I am unable to contain myself. Masturbating is not going to serve me long. Sooner or later I am going to pay money and get relief." I turned off my computer and walked unhurriedly to my room upstairs. I closed the door, shot the bolt, and lay on my bed face down. The mood to masturbate had vanished in the skirmish with my sister.
I heard a tap. I knew it could only be my Akka. I opened the door. Akka came in. We both sat on the cot.
"Rohan please do not go to public women. You may get AIDS. I simply can't bear to see my only brother wither away. Don't do something foolish like that boy Suri either." Suri was a young man who lived in the corner house in our street. Sensational happenings in his home are evergreen hot topics of conversation in our neighbourhood. This Suri had sex with his servant maid. The husband of the woman, with a bunch of his relatives, came one Saturday morning, and standing in front of the house loudly demanded 'justice'. The father of the boy paid good money to square it up. That was not all. Soon after, Suri's unmarried sister, who is a few years older than my sister, became pregnant by an electrician who was rewiring the house. They got her aborted, but the family had to leave town.
The case of Suri and his sister was a topic on which I had spent a lot of thought, and had come to some conclusions. I was eager to air those views.
"Suri had a need and his sister had a need, and both were identical. They should have satisfied it among themselves." I expected to shock my sister, and I did.
"You are suggesting incest," she said quite aghast, jumping up from the cot and facing me with arms on her hips. "Watching pornography has softened your brain."
"I think incest is any day better than having sex with a married house maid, or an electrician who has come to rewire. You may not know it Akka but brother sister intimacy is common. It has to be in our society where sex starved boys and girls are in the same house. It is safer, much safer than the two seeking sex elsewhere—clean, and without complications.
"Enough, Rohan. You are sick, that's all I have to say. Now you close the door and do whatever you planned to do. At least in moderation it is not harmful. You can enjoy your models to your heart's content."
"Want to know who my model is?" I was in an aggressive mood.
"Must be one of those sluts."
"I told you once before that they are not sluts. Anyway want to know?"
"OK, tell me."
"You."
"Me?"
"Yes."
