Thursday, January 10, 2013

Of Birds and Bees!

The other day, over a post-lunch chat with some Singaporean team members, the topic of sex education came up. We were all having a laugh over how you can guess a person's age by just listening to how they first got their sex education. The one's born in 90's learned directly from the Internet, those in 80's learned in formal school programs, and those in 70's from friends. Since I was the only one in the group born in 1960's, all eyes turned to me as they asked me how I found out about the birds and bees. Well this is how!

I learned it all from a book that my loving mom had bought for my older sister to keep her company in a train ride to Chandigarh, where she was going to study. No, my mother was not one of those who believed in being friends with her teenage kids and talking openly about sex and stuff. She bought the book because it looked like a regular romance novel set in medieval times, harmless like the Mills and Boon's books (with a whole lot of sardonic grins and just one kiss at the end) that we used to read as teens. It was only when my sister came home for holidays that she revealed how wonderfully educational that book really was! I remember my mother's reactions as she picked the book and read parts of it- she would cluck and shake her head, and say "haw hai" every now and then! She could not stop talking about how much she regretted buying such trash for her own daughter.

I, 13 or 14 at that time, was forbidden from reading the book, but like everything else I was forbidden from doing, I did surreptitiously. That's how I learned to fly like a bird, and buzz like a bee! 

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