The Naked Truth: What Women And Men Really Want!

On the surface, they appear normal. But how they feel on the inside is a different story.

- Damayanti Datta

I have a confession to make. I have made love to someone whose name I do not know. Nor do I care to know. Let’s not call it “love”, it was just about sex: I was on an office tour to a small town. He, presumably a bell-boy of the hotel, wanted to know if I needed anything. I asked for a spa and a massage. He offered himself. I was in a restless mood and he made me happy. It made me happier when his face lit up with the Rs 1,000 I paid him for the service.

This is not my first confession. I have made my first confession, not to friends, but to a group of young women who approached me last month with a questionnaire in hand—for the annual India Today Sex Survey, mapping the sex quotient of Indians. As one of the 400-plus ‘Never married’ individuals, out of about 4,000 men and women, I have quietly ticked ‘yes’ to the question: ‘Have you ever slept with someone whose name you did not know?’ My secret is now out in print—a nameless, faceless number in the survey—and alive forever in digital memory.

Look at me: I am not alone. I am 1 of every 3 adult Indian women who, like rockstars on the road, think there is nothing wrong with one-night stands. Like 1 in 7 of my fellow urban citizens, who sleep with people whose names they do not know, I believe in exploring the full dynamism of that elusive human experience called sex. On the surface, we appear normal. But how we feel on the inside is a different story: indistinguishable from the happily-smug men and women in the midst of India’s new plenty, we inhabit hidden depths across the country. How well does the nation know us?

THE YEAR WAS 2003