The girl who didn't allow being touched

By: Satarupa Mishra

He came close to her. She swallowed a tear. He drew closer, cupped her face, looked into her eyes, and planted a long kiss. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her hard into his chest. And then, all of a sudden, like a woman possessed by a beastly spirit, she bit him on his lips and savagely pushed him away in haste. 

There he was, hit hard on the ground, with bloody cursed lips, and a shock that was harder than electrocution. After all, what was his fault? He loved her. And he thought she loved him too.

“O My God! What have I done? I love him!” she reminded herself in tears.

Out of embarrassment and fear, she bolted out of his apartment with disheveled hair and a red sniffling nose.

While physical intimacy is a core part of a man-woman relationship, Natasha feared it the most. Like any other girl in a middle class Indian family, Natasha was taught to preserve her virginity for her husband. But, like most other young Indian girls today, she knew she had to dismiss the rule for the sake of her birth right to the fourth basic instinct, sex.

Like a raging mule on fire, she kicked men out of her life every time they tried to strike a physical union with her. Dismissing them as ‘undeserving’, hardly did she contemplate what really made them ineligible. And then, on the verge of 30, she met a man, who was like an idol out of the poster. She confessed her love to him, and was ready to shed her blood and her skin for him. How would he have known that the same woman would punch him down on the ground when he tried to shed her clothes just to draw her closer to him!

Was she a lesbian? She was as straight as the raised phallus aroused by her.

    Did she suffer from inadequate sex drive? Her wild fantasies of a phantom lover could give Mills & Boons a complex.

    Did she have a body image issue? She was proud of her feminine curves and her mildly flawed skin.

So what was it then? In Natasha’s part of the world, getting intimate with a man is more about absolute surrender than about fun. Allowing a man to touch her private parts meant allowing him access to her well-kept secrets. And Natasha… was she willing to let out her secrets? Not really.

Natasha’s pride as a person also rested in her body. It was only her body; no one else’s. Every time a man touched her with a longing, she felt less worthy to make herself physically accessible to him. And every time men said things like, “You are mine… You are my territory… You belong to me…” Natasha had a hard time resisting a throw up. She was neither a land nor a property to belong to someone. In her mind, to belong meant to be enslaved.

Natasha was a free soul, an independent woman, well in command of her finances and her emotions. And such a woman was ready to commit her loyalty to a man, but wasn't ready to belong. She chose not to concede her body to a man for that would have given him a sense of extraordinary power of possession over her. After all, she was the sole mistress of her own throne. She had to uphold her freedom at all cost. But was she really upholding her freedom? By being sexually inaccessible to a man, Natasha was caging her own desires. How could it be a freedom that curbed down her sexual desires, fearing a submission to someone? 

Since a small age, Natasha was imparted that virginity is an exclusive gift she should offer to her husband. It also meant her vagina belonged to none, but her future husband. This kind of an idea indirectly gives enormous sense of power to a husband for he might unknowingly (or knowingly) begin to consider himself the supreme owner of a woman’s body, which, commonly gets vent through romantic expressions. Many Indian men (non-celibates included) strictly preferring virgin wife illustrates this fact. This is the reason why although premarital sex is common in India today, yet, somewhere in depth, when a man makes love to an unwed woman, there is a latent sense of victory in him (all the exceptions excluded). And Natasha didn't want to entertain such a victory to a man.

That way, although Natasha had dismissed the premarital virginity lesson in a flicker, she was still caged by it. She had no qualms about sex before marriage, of course. But she had it rooted in her mind that to have sex with a man meant to give him the power to possess her. What society didn't tell her is that sex doesn't only mean allowing a man to access her body; it also equally means reaping the ultimate pleasure out of a man.

Sex is as simple an activity as playing a fun evening game with a friend, or sharing ice-cream with a sibling - sheer pleasure, mutual acceptance and benefit. Sadly, people heedlessly attach dramatic importance to a woman's virginity (virginity also represents purity, remember?). Many women abide by the rule book; many escape this social pressure; but a few walk into a dark corner of psychological impasse where sex is nothing but dread and slavery. Natasha is an example of that psychological impasse.

Like Natasha, many women are encouraged to be financially independent, and be professionally equal to men today. Unfortunately, this independence and equality is still not encouraged in the sexual life of a woman.