WHAT TRIGGERS YOUR TURN-ON?

Vinita Dawra Nangia
(First published in TOI, May 6, 2007)

The kissa kiss ka refuses to die down. And, why should it? How often do we get the opportunity to legitimately focus on and replay a titillating scene except on DVD in the confines of our bedrooms? And here the courts and media are doing it for us, ensuring we don’t forget what the misguided judge issuing Gere’s arrest warrant, called “the indecent act”
Indecent? Show me one woman who wouldn’t have wanted to be in Shilpa Shetty’s shoes when Richard Gere swung her into a clinch – and I will tell you she is lying!
It’s not so much Gere, as the idea of being swept off her feet that fires a woman’s imagination. And Gere’s action when he grabbed Shilpa is the stuff a woman’s dreams are made of. Women are suckers for romance and find it incredibly sexy to be taken unawares and surprised with a quick hug, an unexpected kiss, a sudden clinch, a gift out of the blue…
Unacceptable as the thought may seem, a hint of aggression is always thrilling. Remember Raj Kapur’s near manhandling of Nargis in their love scenes? The way he pulled her hair to turn her face up to his; how he twisted her arm behind her back to bring her up against his chest? Sigh! In the act of adopting refined metrosexual attributes, men today have forgotten some caveman tactics women swooned over!
Look at the emotions Gere’s act on stage aroused. In a Times survey, every second girl in Mumbai and every third girl in Delhi expressed the desire to switch places with Shilpa as Gere recreated the screen romance when he similarly swung Jennifer Lopez to a gravity-defying angle in Shall We Dance!
Strange indeed are the ways of our titill-o-meters! Not everyone can understand another’s turn-on trigger. Expecting it to be an interesting exercise, I started asking friends and acquaintances what excited them most in love scenes.
Women predictably settled for “that look in the eye,” “a deep baritone,’ or “a lopsided smile.” Smiles and eyes remain a hot favourite with the fairer sex, with humour and a prolonged courtship not quite as desired elements as they used to be once!
However, it was the men’s response that came as a pleasant surprise. Not one of them settled for hard-core sex. Something of an eye-opener was that most men indicated mushy stuff as their big turn-on – certainly not what one expected!
Said a male colleague, “It’s the talk that turns me on – intelligent double entendres that say everything and yet leave a question mark. For instance, if I were to rub my cheek against a woman’s and suggest, “Do you think there’s something between us?” Wow. Just then another said , “No talk. That’s what excites me! Remember Falling in Love? Almost half way through the movie and the tension is palpable but Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro still haven’t spoken to each other. And then one day he does … that’s the stuff turn-ons are made of!”
Not quite yet recovered from this unexpected male mush, yet another male colleague took the wind out of my sails by referring to the scene from Desperado, going gooey over the scene where Antonio Banderas teaches Salma Hayek to play the guitar amidst a sea of candles…
Omigosh, before this gets too mush for me to handle, let’s turn to more pragmatic guys. And, there were some! Said one: “The subtle display of skin, and by this I do not mean in your face nudity. Also stolen glimpses of skin are very erotic. For example, a shapely pair of legs revealed when the wind is blowing hard or a hint of cleavage is far more erotic than the same legs on display in a micro mini or cleavage in a low blouse.” Well said!
Yet another named his erotica: “I find that risk adds a measure of erotica to things. It creates a great frisson when you're making out and there's every possibility you could get caught in the act. Anything from a stolen kiss to making out when someone could walk in at any moment is exciting.”
Wow, we do seem to have made phenomenal progress with men, if indeed exotica rather than erotica dictates their Big Os! Heigh ho!

PR IN TOP GERE!

Vinita Dawra Nangia
(First published in TOI, April 29, 2007)

Shilpa Shetty is a metaphor for foxy celebrities who manipulate social opportunities to gain fame and fortune.Witness the kiss with Richard Gere...

How many of you really believe wide-eyed Shilpa Shetty had no clue what would ensue after that very delectable onstage kiss shared with Richard Gere? Did she have no idea of what was coming when Richard swung her into a clinch which is the stuff female dreams are made of? Not likely.
Paris Hilton’s “leaked” video sex tapes; wardrobe malfunctions ranging from Janet Jackson to Carol Gracias; Mika’s smooch for Rakhi Sawant, and now the Richard-Shilpa kiss – all incidents announce the arrival of the new PR Gods of the 21st century. These peripheral celebrities have perfected the art of keeping the arc lights focused on themselves. Not just that, after creating controversial situations and dropping a timely hint to media, they are also perfect at adroitly stepping away and pretending innocence when hell breaks loose – much as it was meant to!
These are the people who engineer their own future by playing with destiny, but who can also convince the world that they are mere playthings in the hands of destiny! They live a dangerously tantalising life – living on the edge in a new era of media, creating a willing suspension of disbelief.
Shilpa is just a metaphor for being there and yet not there, for having your cake and eating it too. It’s an era of disaggregated identities, you are a part of a process but you are also the one who initiated that process! You step away and pretend it never happened; it’s just a figment of the media’s imagination! In the bargain you become victim as well as attacker; creator as well as the creation! So then what happens? The turn your life takes after that can only be called “conditioned destiny” and the response is far more incisive and effective than a paid PR plan! This is premeditated social behaviour that creates Gods out of mortals.
Consider this. First Celebrity Big Brother helps shoot Shilpa to international celebrity status with well-timed hints and interviews to media from her mom and sister on how Shilpa is being missed at home and how she is bearing up to the pressure of racial discrimination. In the blink of an eye, you find the girl-from-nowhere at the centre of a huge racial controversy spanning nations. Next she is being presented to the Queen and riding high on the popularity index. In the middle of it all, Shilpa plays God -- putting on an innocent act, magnanimously forgiving Jade Goody all her racial taunts and insults!
Then, just as the brouhaha around her threatens to settle down, Shilpa finds herself at the centre of yet another storm that stirs up media in India as well as abroad because of the involvement of a Hollywood star. Once again, Shilpa steps forward as the generous protector and benefactor “Poor guy! For such a trivial issue! How will it look in the international press? … Richard was just trying to entertain an unresponsive audience."
Of course she glosses over her own “teasing” of Richard Gere at lunch the same day about his “dance step from Shall We Dance. She hurries to clarify, “it was nothing but a joke and not pre-planned at all.” When reminded about a similar uproar when Padmini Kolhapure kissed Prince Charles many years ago, Shilpa said, "That was on the lips. This was on the cheek, for crying out loud!” Much like Bill Clinton’s protest that he never actually had sex with Lewinsky!

THE ENTIRE TRUTH?

Vinita Dawra Nangia

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all…
(Joni Mitchell, Love Actually)

How many times have you heard people say, “Oh I know my husband so well, he just wouldn’t do this!” or, “I know her through and through; she’s my daughter after all!” Famous last words. Don’t ever believe them!
You can live with someone an entire lifetime and yet not know everything about them. We know only what another may wish to reveal or what actions and words give away. And that holds true of even those closest to us.
Believing in my salad days that loving is telling all and knowing all, I would be frustrated if loved ones chose to keep away certain things or even at the hint of a falsehood. I would consider it a betrayal to keep even stray thoughts secret. Being painfully honest was almost a religion. Why should there be any secrets between lovers – loving is to be naked with each other in every respect.
And yet, we all remember Tess d’Urberville’s instant fall from love and life after her confession to Angel of a prior sexual encounter. And this, after Hardy’s heroine has forgiven her husband of a few hours, all his trespasses! What value truth?
Life is a great teacher and we all grow up to know better. Revealing the simple truth isn’t possible because there’s nothing simple about truth. Revealing your self entirely to another is impossible because there are multiple dimensions to your personality just as there are multiple dimensions of the same reality, looked at from different perspectives. There’s a generous you and there’s a mean you; you are honest as well as dishonest; creative as well as destructive; calm as well as chaotic. It all depends on the time of the day or who you are interacting with. Were you to reveal all these selves to another, would they not consider you a fit case for multiple personality disorder? And yet, you know you are fine with the way you are because an amalgamation of all these characteristics makes you, YOU -- the entity!
Revealing the entire truth is not even an option because truth, far from being just a binary representation of life, is contextual and multidimensional. Can anybody but Eva Braun understand the Hitler she loved, lived for and died with? And yet, that Hitler was her reality, while the rest of the world’s reality was a totally different man! "I’ve always said that I shan’t go on living if anything happens to you. You know that my whole life is loving you," she wrote to the man hated by the entire world!
Being truthful to one another is a complex expression because you are just revealing an aspect of yourself which is true and there are many other aspects. And so, when there is a truth and a falsehood in everything, your reality is the end of the stick you happen to latch on to.
Don’t we all know people who bring out different perspectives and evoke varied reactions from us? Some make you feel on top of the world; some bring out the worst in you; with some you go all quiet, while others bring out the talker within you. Some leave you stone cold, while others get you red hot!
They say there’s a sacred space that each of us keeps locked deep within us. The world sees what you choose to reveal. And isn’t that a blessing? Imagine your soul laid out bare for all to see, every thought, every emotion, every idea that flits through you. What a horrifying thought! Today, far from insisting on revealing all, I wouldn’t want to peep into another’s sacred space either! Call it loss of innocence or a part of growing up, but today I respect the need for a sacred space within that one can withdraw to, gain succour from and always depend upon. As for not knowing everything about friends, acquaintances and loved ones, thank God for that!

C’MON, GROW UP MUM!

Even as you are figuring out how to tell your kids about the birds and the bees, they are out there doing it!

Vinita Dawra Nangia

A friend’s 10-year-old daughter asked an innocent question, “Mama, is it bad to talk to boys?” As her panicked heart almost dropped to her silver kolhapuris, the mother managed to reply equally casually, “No beta, it’s just the same as talking to your girl friends.”

It’s another matter that she spent rest of the day on phone with friends, torturing over whether she gave the right answer. Right or wrong, who’s to say? I spent years in dread of my kids asking me about the birds and the bees, preparing myself and priming my husband on possible answers. Advertisements of condoms or sanitary towels had us squirming, waiting for the questions that never came. Apprehension turned to curiosity, till one day it sunk in that by now the children could possibly teach us a thing or two!

When and where did they pick up the facts of life? That doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we were left totally out in the cold; our children never really felt the need to come to us for explanations or answers. Peers and media fulfilled that need.

There’s a huge disconnect because we are looking at the situation through the prism of our growing up years while these children have grown by leaps beyond a mere generation gap. I may have shed some tears of humiliation while changing out of my clingy tops as a teenager at my dad’s orders. Today’s children just laugh right back in your face, “Grow up, Mum!” What is ridiculous is that your children may well be indulging in consensual sex while you are still wondering how to impart sex education to them! So that it comes to a situation where parents need counseling far more than children ever do!

A colleague got a wake-up call when she discovered a packet of condoms in her 17-year-old’s bag; another hapless mum furtively screening her 17-year-old daughter’s text messages, was horrified to read, “Last night was wonderful!” She thought she’d sent her daughter for an innocent sleepover at a girlfriend’s place.

In both cases, when confronted, the children (unknown to each other) exploded at the invasion of their privacy and threatened to walk out. When the mother refused to back down, the boy stopped coming back home from his boarding for the weekends. In the second case, the mother realised that all she could do was accept the fact that her daughter was sexually active and just offer herself as a friend, to warn her against an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. She thus won her daughter’s confidence.

Whether sex education be imparted at home or school is an irrelevant debate for talk shows or print media today. Children have their own ways of knowing; they are out there doing it while you are busy figuring out how to tell them! Everyone tells parents to be liberal and talk about sex to their children, but nobody tells them how! A far better approach to your child is to be a confidante rather than talk down to him, hemming and hawing and making sex sound like a crime!

Virginity is no longer a noble word, nor is it an expected virtue by most youngsters. As in other fields, Bollywood stars lead the way here too. When an Aishwarya has a rather public affair with first Salman Khan, then Viveik Oberoi and ends up marrying Abhishek Bachchan, who has been through a similar number if not more of lovers – what price virginity?

And yet, parents will be parents and not sleep easy till their young ones are back home, sleeping peacefully in their own beds. So between being the protector and the confidante, where do you draw the line? One is quite amused by an interesting compromise some parents in Hyderabad have arrived at! Their young, working daughters and sons – mostly the IT or call centre crowd – cannot be debarred from late nights and visiting discotheques. So what have parents done to avoid sleepless nights? They have appointed security guards who accompany the youngsters to and from these venues.

One has to agree, the presence of a security guard can put a dampener on any ideas of a backseat canoodle!

ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM…

Daydreaming. Mind wandering. Escapism. Call it what you will, but the mind does have a tendency to escape present confines fairly regularly

Vinita Dawra Nangia

Driving through heavy rain, I was arrested by the sight of a man dancing with vigour and certain panache in the middle of the road. He was obviously not quite with us, executing graceful twists and bowing to an audience visible just to his eyes. And yet, his exuberance was infectious and made passers-by smile.

Lost in a world of his own, he could rise above present circumstance and dwell in a reality that uplifted him.

This poor man was deranged and had his own demons to fight. Madness, even feigned as with Hamlet, gives us an excuse to escape reality and act at will. But even without that excuse, don’t we all seek escape from present circumstance and find solace in a world where thoughts become a reality that is more appealing than what surrounds us?

Daydreaming. Mind wandering. Escapism. Call it what you will, but the mind does have a tendency to escape present confines fairly regularly. Have you noticed how sometimes while engaged in familiar tasks, such as driving on a familiar route or eating, you lose track of time and are for a while unaware of what happened around you as your mind wanders? Yes, it happens to all of us. Psychologists have estimated that we daydream for one-third, or even half our waking hours!

Disconnecting for a while from reality is a need we all feel. And, what better way than creating a world away from reality with the help of imagination? A world that shapes up just the way we want it to? To become a weaver of dreams, build a suspension of disbelief, and so get away from everyday drudgery? All you could ever want can be yours – in that dream world you spin for yourself.

We do it all the while even without realizing. Have you never been pulled up in a meeting for daydreaming? Don’t you indulge in some dreaming while on a walk or in the middle of a mundane task? Have you never been horrified to catch yourself thinking of a presentation during an intimate moment!

A good book or movie too has the power to transport you to another world so that you land on your feet with a thud when it ends! Recent research quoted in US journal Science, reveals that “daydreaming is the brain’s normal state, rather than a pointless distraction!”

Most creative people – writers, artists, poets, thinkers – report their most inspiring moments during bouts of daydreaming. It is only when we give free rein to our imagination that we let go of limitations like fact and reason – what Keats termed as “negative capability” – the ability to hold onto a beautiful truth even if it doesn’t stand to reason. That’s what imagination helps us achieve – you always aim high and think big while daydreaming.

Would you believe, daydreaming, which gives the brain a much-needed break, is also used as a therapy in conflict management? Dreamers have better relationships because they tend to concentrate more on the better moments in a relationship.

But, as it happens with most joyous activities in life, more often than not we are made to feel guilty for even daydreaming! But, what if it’s these moments of escape that give you your day’s highpoints? What if this detachment from reality gives you your reasons to live?

So long as you don’t hurt anyone, why not just indulge? Just be careful not to dream so hard it erodes the distinction between dream and reality, thus toppling you over to the side of the man dancing in the rain!

A DIFFICULT WOMAN!

Isn’t it ironic that a woman spends half her life trying to prove she can do it as well as a man, and the rest in disproving the adjunct of “difficult” she earns as a result of that effort!

Vinita Dawra Nangia

Being a woman is like being on stage for most part of the day -- enacting roles, proving your worth, being watched and generally being put to test, so to speak.

In a work scenario dominated by men, a woman has to first prove she’s no less capable and then get on with the day’s work. Fighting stereotypes and biases, she has to initially put in double the effort to be half as effective. If she is to achieve a measure of success, a woman has to necessarily be tougher and more focussed than a guy. For, very soon a working girl realises it’s better to have a “tough” image rather than a compliant one. Though, later on, this unfortunately is what proves to be her nemesis!

As it did with Kiran Bedi. Supercop, superwoman – yet superceded for post of Delhi police commissioner by a man two years her junior in service. Where did she go wrong?

Men usually have two tried and tested ways of dealing with a woman at work – they either slip into the “Me Tarzan, you Jane” role with effortless ease, or they try their darnedest to desex her and accept her as “one of the boys”! With the first they settle into a comfortable, lightly flirtatious mode, in turn bestowing or withdrawing smiles to make her do their bidding. With the second, she becomes what Kiran Bedi calls their “booze buddy” – bingeing at watering holes and sharing a smoke on the staircase with them. Here she becomes one of them and more often than not, goes into an overdrive to acquire male acceptability.

When a woman resists both these castings and rather than gaining popularity with the men, concentrates on being an effective, no-nonsense professional, men resort to tagging her with their favourite epithet for women they can’t control – DIFFICULT! Obviously from their viewpoint she is difficult – because she is immune to all sexist manipulative tactics they know, and yet, as efficient and capable as they come!

In attempting to manage her work efficiently, she has earned the reputation of a succesful doer, who will naturally rub many up the wrong way as she goes about her work.

And so, when the time comes to reward her efforts, men around dither because they are out of their depth dealing with someone who scares them with her effiiency. Hence the epithet “difficult woman”.

Isn’t it ironic that a woman spends half her life trying to prove she can do it as well as a man, and the rest in disproving the adjunct of “difficult” she earns as a result of that effort!

While Kiran Bedi was good enough for some of the most difficult and unpopular postings (each one of which she turned around to her advantage), when it was her chance to be appointed police commissioner, her “tough, independent image” became her nemesis! Similarly, seniormost woman IAS officer Reva Nayyar didn’t make it as Cabinet Secretary. and Veena Sikri, IFS, wasn’t given any reason why government chose to overlook her when it came to appointing Foreign Secretary!

Have you noticed that while merit lists of school and competitive exams are dominated by girls, in the journey between classroom and boardroom, they seem to lose their advantage? Why? Because in the office situation, unlike at school or competitions, she is for the first time being evaluated, not as another roll number, but as a woman!!

Twenty-one years ago the Wall Street Journal had coined the term “glass ceiling” to refer to apparent barriers that prevent women from reaching the top hierarchy. For every Kiran Bedi who hits the headlines today, there are still any number of other victims who wither unseen.

No man can acknowledge the multi tasking dexterity of a woman. And she pays for that; how she pays! She is usually the one who handles home as well as office, but dare she let the twain meet? Not if she hopes to see her career graph on an upward swing!

If her children are unwell, she better give any other excuse but the truth or she gets typecast as a woman with family problems, unable to bear up under office pressure.

So then, does this mean that a woman in order to be successful, must settle into being either compliant or a booze buddy? Here I disagree with Kiran Bedi. Though slipping into roles men find comfortable may smoothen your daily official interactions, it certainly doesn’t translate into promotions or increments! The only women who have yet made it to the top – and there is a handful in India even today – are those that chose to march to their own drummers and were efficient professionals.

If she hopes to be a successful professional, a woman must learn to run neither with the wolves, nor with the hounds. She has to pave her own path and in doing so, ensure she doesn’t rub too many people up the wrong way. She needs to pray hard that men lose their insecurities.

And she has to be lucky. Man, does she have to be lucky!

DID YOU TOUCH SOMEONE TODAY?

A touch goes beyond physical and forges a connect that is more on an emotional and spiritual level. And yet, have you ever thought though something as remote as a rainbow can touch you, sometimes even the most intimate physical experiences can leave you untouched!

Vinita Dawra Nangia

Close your eyes and think of your most peaceful, healing moments. No matter what comes to mind, there’s bound to be a “touch” somewhere – your mother’s hand on your head; the arms of a loved one around you; the first time you held your baby; beauty that touched your heart; music that touched your soul; someone who came into your life and touched a chord…
Is a touch physical? Yes and no. A touch goes beyond physical and forges a connect that is more on an emotional and spiritual level. A life that touched you; a voice that touches you, or memories that will touch you forever… how can any of these be merely physical?
Consider, what would you rather lose – sight or feeling of touch? Think about it, and you realize the sensation of touch connects you far better to rest of the world than your other senses. Children instinctively seek physical contact whenever disturbed or happy. It’s only as we grow older that touching embarrasses us, because by then we start associating it with sexuality.
Animals touch each other all the time. That’s why pets who invite touch give us a feeling of well-being and are precious, especially to singles. Touch is as vital to animals as to every human being.
Remember what an instant hit Munnabhai’s jaadu ki jhappi became! If you dismiss that as fictive reality, what about the Free Hugs movement that’s creating waves across the world? Indeed, research has proved that a good hug rates second only to a good talk when it comes to blowing away the blues. If that’s not enough, hugging releases the hormone oxytocin, which is proven to arouse a caring response in men and women.

In olden times, medicine men healed with a touch; today men in love swear their woman can do the same for them! Jokes apart, therapeutic touch healing is today a successful form of alternate medicine that tries to gently manipulate the body’s energy flow towards a healthy and balanced one.
Ever stood next to an inconsolable friend or relative and not known what to say? You don’t need to; just a touch or hug conveys all. How many times has a hug suddenly made you feel better about yourself and the world?
In all this, touch helps form an instant bond and opens communication between two people. It can happen with those you know very well or sometimes, even with virtual strangers. But the deepest connect that touch helps us build, is with ourselves. Even touch therapy actually aids your own body to heal itself. The right touch helps you feel better about yourself instantly! A rainbow, snowy clouds, green meadows and soulful music that touch us, help us connect with our souls.
And yet, have you ever thought though something as remote as a rainbow can touch you, sometimes even the most intimate physical experiences can leave you untouched! The connection just doesn’t work.
And if there are touches that inspire, there are also those that don’t -- touches that leave you not just “untouched”, but defiled. These unwanted touches invade your personal space and could range from a deliberate brushing past on a crowded street to a colleague who insists on making his point by touching your arm or shoulder, to even just leery eyes that touch you intimately.
Strangely, in India, we are far more wary of touching and being touched than in the West. A rigid morality makes us question even the most innocent of gestures. So we are poor givers and getters of touch. Most of us have never even seen our parents hold hands or sit with their arms around each other, let alone hugging or kissing!
Think, how many times in the day are you touched or reach out to touch others? In what ways are you comfortable being touched? When was the last time you touched your grandparents or your parents? Think. For, if you have a questioning heart, you are bound to have an untouched one too…