The Godrej Almirah And Other Places Where Girls Learn Shame

That night I ripped out my nipple piercing on a dark green steel Godrej almirah. The Godrej almirah takes its place amongst the staples of the Indian middle-class household with the Nikamal plastic chairs, the Milton hot box, the Zandu balm, the glass cabinet of past glories, fridge magnet memories, that dead grandfather’s spectacles and Colgate. In an intriguing design choice, purely and sub-continentally, Indian, Godrej almirahs have the mirror placed on the outer side of the door, rather than on the inside where one would expect it to be.

An inspection of your naked self must be undertaken undefended, without the protection of the steel shield of an almirah’s door, yanked open, strategically positioned to guard the helpless nudity of the observer.  Any clandestine self-checking out I had to do as a teenager, a regular review of the growth of my breasts, an examination of the curvature of my waist, a study of the arc of the projection of my buttocks had to be meticulously thought out.

The factors to be considered were the working hours of my parents, the playing time of my brother, the siesta sessions of my grandmother and the mopping schedule of the domestic helper. An error in procedure, an unexpected change in the programme would lead to my undoing. A teenaged girl’s probing of her own body is dangerously close to sexual curiosity, anatomically such a survey is bound expose her to the as yet hidden but definitely not lacking in number, erotogenic zones of her body.

Although, my reasons for the inspection were purely out of a necessity to placate the growing pangs of pain my chest, a crisis of self-esteem, born out of the horrors of comparing a pre-pubescent body to the technological marvel of the twenty-first century, the cosmetically-manipulated, industry-moderated, surgically-perfected bodies of the Television Women. 

Failing the industry-mandated dimensions, cup-sizes, waist widths, buttock breadths, eyebrow arches, nose linearity, protrusion of the collar bones, finger girths, orientation of the belly button, angularity of the jaw bone, height of the cheek bone, that precise darkening of the elbow fold, the jutting of the calf bone, the cut of the calf muscle, the dips under the spine, the gaps between the thighs, the resting of rear fat, the nipples like sunflowers, upward facing the sun, lest they sag, sink, subside, into that bottomless chasm, that abyss of abysmal tits, the lips of the vulva, chiselled into submission, the labia majora must submit, like the gentle petals of the champa, unlike the ears of an elephant, those thick dark curtains of meat, clumsy and flailing, like the champa they must open to a sweet floral scent, the labia minora, the wings clipped, a butterfly pinned to a board, the entomologist leans in, dissects, the clitoris, the mistress of the house, must stand decked and perceptible, obvious, at every beck and call, answerable, easy to emote, simple to stimulate, must be demonstrably manifest.

The Industry is ruthless, it demands compliance to impossible standards, surrender soon, child, teenage self-abasement is hardly remembered, practice non-resistance, deference to the dimensions, yield, subject, serve the scalpel, the cream and the mask, resign before the meekness of your mind runs out, before, your malleable bones will bend, take shape, assume charge, not break like your spirit, the soul crushed into setting powder, finished with glitter, a highlighter, a tap on the cheek will invite the stars for a rendezvous under your heavy eye bags, surrender soon child, teenage self-abasement is hardly ever remembered. 

One would think, being an outcast of The Industry, I would be found straying, starving on the margins of The Factory. On the contrary, one ventures inside, the automatic doors swing open, inviting the wretched of the earth to the glamourous world of the Television Women. Screens abound, sirens blare, advertising the miracles of the scalpel, the cream and the mask. Top notch capitalist innovation.

The Factory is an imposing building, inside and out. Designed to derive awe, to deprive dignity and to inspire fear. Having crawled on my stomach through the salt pans of teenage androgyny, I decided I needed to kiss a boy to feel something. How to kiss? I went to the home computer, prominently placed near the door in the drawing room and searched up kissing and touching videos. Which my mother, God bless her, promptly found. 

She bought me an illustrated children’s bible one day after I had looked up some pornography on the home computer. It was an expensive book and heavy. Glossy pages of the Old Testament. I could barely lift it, but she made me read the entire thing. Adam and Eve, she said, fell to temptation. They fell all the way from the Garden of Eden to Earth, and she dropped the book to the ground and it fell with heavy thud.

I was already on Earth though, I thought, where could I fall from here? And so I fell to my knees in front of her to beg for forgiveness, for that terrible sin of pre-pubescent sexual curiosity and she took me to the chapel. I fell to my knees in front of the cross. And then I fell to my knees in front of the Father. And it became clear to me, that on Earth, falling to my knees was as far as temptation would take me.

There was nowhere else to go, this was the punishment. The Garden was up above, with our father who art in heaven, whose kingdom hadn’t yet come to do in Earth as it is in heaven, he would give me my daily bread and forgive my trespasses, but the Garden was up above and there was no way of going there. And so later when I fell to my knees, many times in front of many men, each time I would pray for forgiveness.

And each time I would be rewarded with cum in my mouth. Was that the Holy Communion? I wouldn’t know. Each time I fell to my knees, it felt like submission, not to the man, but to all that was holy. There isn’t much that is holy in the modern age, my illustrated children’s bible was the last of it. I think she gave it away to someone else when she realised, I was as steadfast in my unfaith as she was in her faith. A pity, it was a lovely book. 

I turned to other books after that. Women writing erotica. All lies, all fabrications. The first time I had sex with a man, it was nothing like what I had imagined it to be. I then realised I was speaking the wrong language. A lot is lost in translation when you have sex with men in the language of women, it’s funny really, have sex with enough men and you will understand.

You try, make an effort, like you would in a foreign country trying to take a cab, enunciate the word syllable by syllable, break apart the sentence, put it together in strange ways, contort your face, points to your lips and open your mouth wide, exasperate, look up, look down, look to the side, try to find a speaker of your tongue, roll your tongue, roll your eyes, roll your eyes all the way back to look into your skull, rack your brain, search every corner, roll them back, fix your eyes on that poor soul and try again, banking on the hope of some universal commonality of tongue, you give up, look at your shoes and sit in the cab and let him take you wherever he goes. That is sex for most women who do not speak the language of men. That was me before I taught myself their language. I’m fluent now. 

Men understand numbers though, I must begin telling women to start collating data on their bodies, make an excel sheet and share it beforehand. Make the columns, put in the numbers and you will get the results you want. Figure out the coital-alignment techniques, the precise of angle of penetration to achieve genital circuity, the exact time, depth and strength of each stroke, the intervals between the pressure and counterpressure points, maximise genital contact, minimise dysfunction, coordinate sexual movement to optimise penile-clitoral proximity, define the intercourse in clear, concise terms, refrain from using too much jargon, throw in numbers, the exact number of thrusts you will need to orgasm, how many kisses does it take to make you cum, an accurate estimate of caresses you will need, how many minutes of foreplay gets you wet, do you prefer a thousand dots on the condom or is five hundred enough, ribbed or dotted, draw a map, don’t forget to mark the coordinates of your clitoris.

In fact, run some rods through your clitoris and erect a lighthouse there, lest he get lost in that wet, salty sea that is the vulva, make an itinerary for him, places of interest, must-visit tourist attractions on your body, where to start, where to rest, what to do, what to see, what to eat, create an agenda of the positions you want to try, get it ratified before attempting something new, men don’t like surprises in bed, list the positions in the exact order of execution, memorise it, and do not forget to create the slides, add some transitions and there you’ve done it, you’ve explained sex to a man. Mansplained. Add a hashtag to it, and make it trend.

This post is written by one of the winners of the writing contest on Love And Desire In All Forms in collaboration with Youth Ki Awaaz.