if you've heard about the Bengali film writer and director Q and are trying to get hold of his movie 'Gandu', I have better advice for you. fget Gandu (which is probably his wet nightmare on screen) and try getting hold of another film by him 'Love in India'. its not really a movie, and yet its more than a documentary. its more like his thesis, his personal soul searching for the meaning of love and sexuality in India; today, yesterday, and aeons ago. he travels far and wide within the country to find the logic, the meaning, the philosophy to sex. and compare it with how Indians today (mis)understand, ignore, and hide, sex.

watching it made me feel sorry for the country. it is difficult to describe all that he has successfully conveyed through the film. its simply very honest. and although he gets opinionated at times, and you may not agree with all his opinions, you cannot ignore the reality in them, and that they apply to many, sorry most, Indians today.

i don't believe in marriage, just like the filmmaker does not. and yet i'm glad i married for love. if marriage is such a disillusion, then i have the guts to marry for love, and challenge my love with marriage. does that sound strange? strange to me are his friend's words in the film - that sex is for before marriage, which itself is just a compromise, a duty, and after marriage sex comes in through extramarital affairs. that that is why Krishna & Rukmini are not a celebrated couple, but Krishna and Radha are the epitome of love and sex.

its sad that we look for excuses in our mythology for our warped ideas, while we leave the beauty and the honesty in those stories, unpracticed in our lives.

today for the first time, after watching his film, i honestly acknowledged to myself that getting out of the country, coming so far away has liberated me in a way. i understand myself better, i know myself better and i acknowledge what i know much more easily. i can now judge Indian misconceptions about sexuality without feeling like a victim trapped in them.

its astounding that most Indians haven't ever seen their parents kiss. that most feel really awkward talking about sex, even marital sex. and abhor the idea of oral sex. its sad that India teaches her women to be ashamed of their sexuality, to keep it well covered, as if it were a weakness she was born with. a weakness that is better protected if the world doesn't know about it.

there's just one thing the film misses out. it digs the legend of Radha-Krishna's illicit love beautifully, but does not even talk about Shiv-Parvati, about the only married (to each other) lovers in Indian mythology who define sexual relations, whose union has been made immortal in the lingam. long ago, someone told me this, that when you bless a married couple, you don't bless them to be like Ram-Sita, you'd rather bless them to be like Shiv-Parvati. and to think of the legend about why the lingam is worshipped - it was actually a curse on Shiv to be remembered by his genitals, by the annoyed sage Bhrigu who was kept waiting while Shiv-Parvati were busy making love.

only an epidemic of honesty can eradicate sexual hypocrisy from India.

a man is defined by the words he quotes in his major inquiries in life and science. and by his family and the love or hatred or memory or kinship that he feels for them. and by his childhood and what he shared with his siblings. and how he preserves some of that as he grows up and moderates the others, erasing or retaining in memory all the while. by his friends, not just those who played and bled with him, but also those he could die for. those he could be silent with.

a man is defined by the woman he loves and she by him. and each is defined by the music they hear...

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Henry David Thoreau