Sex Education
NCJPS Diaries, Chapter-4
No one passes out from school without getting primary sex education. And by that I do not mean those sham Biology classes where even teachers zip through the controversial topic in hushed voices. The real teachers are your closest friends. During latter half of schooling, each one of us came across this unexplored territory either accidentally or deliberately. Some were reluctant learners while others were active enthusiasts - ever ready to venture into forbidden land. Mine was a case of chance enlightenment by whispers.
In class VIIth Puneet, Myself and Rajesh were close friends. Puneet was good in sports and bad in studies, I was good in studies and bad in sports, Rajesh was bad in both. Rajesh was many years older to us and had he not flunked classes, he would have been in 10th standard by then. Because of this age factor, he was fondly teased as ‘Budha’ - not to be mistaken as Gautam Budhha. Rajesh, the ‘Budha’ or ‘Badau’ or ‘old man’ justified the nickname by his unsolicited talks on non-scholarly subjects which were generally beyond our comprehension.
One fine day, I made an early return to class after my stroll in recess time. Rajesh and Puneet were sitting on second last bench in the farthest column. I found them discussing something in dramatic whispers. That was little odd given their outgoing, flamboyant personalities. I immediately set my attention towards them and went to find out what was cooking. “Rajesh ne ek badi khatarnak baat batayi hai!” exclaimed visibly thrilled Puneet. “Why the hell was I kept out?” - I enquired. “Tu abhi chota hai” Rajesh interjected. Puneet flunked in 4th, by that virtue I became the youngest in the group. But still that comment didn’t went down well with my over presumed self confidence. I insisted to be made part of discussion and after little more haggling, Puneet informed me that Rajesh knows how the babies are produced. That’s interesting, I thought. Curious to know about the process, I prodded them further. It took quite a few assurances and pledge to remain confidant before Rajesh agreed to reveal the secret. He looked around to make sure that no one was listening, made a huddle and divulged the act in crudest possible language. Instantly it produced a feeling of repulsion and I couldn’t believe what I just heard. When Rajesh explained it further by adding graphic details, I was about to puke in the class. Then and there I dismissed it as pure filthy fiction made up by stupid Rajesh and even went to an extent of convincing Puneet not to believe this cock and bull story. The question arose- if not this then what? To it I offered- “I know 6 different ways to produce babies.” My answer extracted an awe and now in role reversal, I became the teacher of other two. I’ll come to the reason of why I uttered the figure of ‘6’, a little later. Taking the discourse ahead I said- “There are 6 tricks to make love and produce babies. All of them are very decent, unlike the dirty procedure stated by Rajesh.” After ‘tell, tell’ moment, I elaborated- “First one is kissing. ‘Lip to lip’ to be specific. It is the easiest way and is shown in the movies too.” ‘Hein?’ and ‘Achha!’ from Puneet and Rajesh emboldened my confidence and I proceeded with the second trick. “Simply lying above each other is also common way to make babies.” - I took clue for this one from Julie movie where it was depicted. The hero laid on heroine under a sheet, both bare bodied with a popular song being played in the background and next I knew that she got pregnant. “What are the balance four?”- by now Puneet was confused and Rajesh was apprehensive. “I will find out about them”- I took up the challenge. After some intense deliberations I could convince Puneet to be on my side and together we junked Rajesh Sharma’s atrocious theory. “Mein apne ghar wale dost se dobara puchunga ki aur bhi tarike hotye hain kya?” - were the closing comments of Rajesh before the meeting was dismissed.
Let me go back to mystery of ‘6’. In 80’s and 90’s the ‘A’ certified films were screened as morning shows at theaters. Explicit advertisements of such movies used to appear at inner pages of newspapers. The posters were suggestive, actresses half nude and titles double meaning. Depiction was purposefully kept such, so as to draw drooling readers to theaters. They were bi-lingual, Hindi as well as English, though I’m sure language was least of concern to potential spectators and what mattered most was the content. Therefore, the pictures published contained scantily clad heroines and one such extreme advertisement I happened to see was from a movie called ‘6 Ways Of Love’. It ran in ‘Milan’ theater Karampura week after week. While seeing its daily promo in newspaper I began to wonder what could possibly be the ‘6 ways’! My eye for detail got intrigued by the passionate smooch shown in the advertisement and wild imagination made me believe that this definitely is one of the ways. While I invented the 1st way on Friday, it took a Wednesday to concoct 2nd. At 08:30 pm, Chitrahaar played “bhool gaya sab kuch….” and I could recall that in this movie, Julie actually conceived after this song. Thoughts ran amok and I discovered 2nd way to produce babies. Both the ways came handy when I confidently countered Rajesh few months later during aforementioned lunch time.
One year went by without any further deliberations, nor did I believe even an iota of the thing I was told in that recess break. My own concocted ‘ways of love’ took the upper hand until in another recess break of VIIIth, Puneet pulled me aside. He informed me that he has seen a video on VCR of Pawandeep and if I want, could arrange the cassette for me too. Pawan was a fellow classmate from other section and was part of a notorious gang known to bring prohibited stuff in school. Puneet wanted me to watch it so that I could correct my weird theories on reproduction. I used to have a 2 hour window at home where I had exclusive access to VCR all by myself. I planned to utilize it. Black colored cassette which had no title printed on it was in my school bag next day. And I saw the film - commonly known as ‘Blue Film’ in our times. I must admit that I couldn’t bear the entire length and switched off the sleazy movie after 15 minutes or so. I was not able to tolerate the hard pornographic content. My hands shivered, body temperature shot up and heart palpitations became audible. To my astonishment I found out that Rajesh was right. The shock effect lasted through the evening and even beyond that. I could make out that something was not right within me.
First thing I did next morning at school was to tell Puneet - “Abbe yaar, Budha was 100% right!” Alas, Rajesh was no more in school to take the accolades as he was rusticated for having flunked again in VIIth. But my euphoria didn’t end there. Still persisting on my fancy theories, I told Puneet that even I was right too because the video purportedly showed two of the ‘6 ways’ that I was professing all this while. I was referring to the smooches and nude embraces shown during the foreplay. My argument of ‘availability of many options to produce babies’ summarily got rejected by Puneet as well as Pawan. They were no longer discarding the Rajesh’s horrible procedure and insisted that there exists only one way. But I still had my doubts. To hell with others, I thought; and kept my simple, elegant, easy to do procedures of reproduction intact. God must have gone crazy at my beliefs.
It took yet another year, when in class IXth another close friend Amit told me that he has actually witnessed the act - live. I do not know how much truth was there in his claim but he shattered all my graceful processes while explicitly describing the complex positions, which apparently he had seen with his own eyes. That was a huge revelation and it set me thinking- “Budha was 100% right all this time and I was 100% wrong”! It took few more performing video cassettes and many more fascinating classes by friends to firm up my mind on one and only one way to make love. The risk I took to watch couple of those ‘blue films’ was enormous because if there happens to be a power cut during screening, the cassette used to get stuck in the VCR. Fortunately, I was spared of any such embarrassment but Pawan was not that lucky. He was caught by his father when a long electricity snag made his foolproof tactics go awry. Needless to say, he got the much deserved violent treatment.
My sex education got completed with the help of few friends and what started as “Chi Chi” in VIIth finally got culminated into “Wow” by IXth. I am sure the narrated episode must have set you thinking on your introduction to the taboo subject. Who was your sex teacher? Answer your own self. Mine was Rajesh aka Budha.
