I recently got married and moved to the United States of America. After my marriage, as do all "Good Indian Girls"... for the first time in my life, I came to discover a new side of relationship, the physical side.

It may appear surprising to many westerners, most Indian girls are virgins at the time of their wedding. I was no exception. This doesn't mean, I was unattractive or prudish, or there was something completely wrong with me, its just how girls in good families, well, in most respectable families in India are raised up. Even if they have a boyfriend or they are in a very serious relationship, seldom do couples consummate the relationship outside matrimony. However once you are married, the society gives you the full liberty to do as the couple pleases. Ofcourse a lot of these ideas are changing now, and Indian youth is trying to ape the west by getting into the physical relationship before matrimony. A recently released Bengali movie "Bedroom" shares this growing trend.

Anyhow this article isn't about what Indian youth is interested in or about how I and my husband perform in that sector... it is about this book that I came across recently titled, "the Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex"...

Well if I had been in India, I would have never picked up the book in the first place... but as I am now far away from home, away from the prying eyes of elders, that I managed to sneak this book into my bag, yes "sneak" is the correct word, for I felt really shameful, in taking this book from a Public Library and checking it out and putting it into my bag... fortunately, American libraries do not have a librarian "aunty" or "uncle" who reads each tittle you are borrowing and frowns upon your choice. It's all done by a machine... thanks god. Even this small act of checking out a book, would show how much Indians are discrete about sex.

I got married at the age of 28... at the time of my marriage I was working with the largest selling English Newspaper, the largest media group in South Asia, and I had graduated from the top notch College of India... my father and mother are extremely educated and very well off, and my only brother is a Lawyer and a Corporate Executive... yet we never, ever talked about sex...

It's only when I came to the United States, that I was extremely surprised to see people being so open with it. I am not saying I liked or I disliked it, it was just very, very new for me... So anyhow, I picked up this book, I didn't even tell my newly wed husband, and started reading. Well the first thing that utterly surprised me was that how much the author stressed upon the fact that girls and guys getting into a matrimony should be "virgins" at the time of the wedding!!!!! God...!!!! I was surprised, utterly elated and I realized, that our ol' Indian way is actually good, and how the West is trying to get back what it had left zillions of years ago in the name of liberalism and individualism...

As I am progressing, in the book, some of the ideas discussed, are already really well known to us Indians. The author of the book , is a legendary marriage counselor of Canada, Sheila Wray Gregoire and a speaker at numerous marriage conferences. In this given book, she defines and re-defines the true "Christian" way behaving in a marriage. The basis of this book, she writes in the foreward, is a survey done by National Health Care of North America and the questions raised by millions of her patients, about "act" of making love...

The author has divided this book, into a "Good Girl"- "Bad Girl" lessons, the "Bad Girl" lessons are supposed to be evil, and which if followed can never bring any happiness, whereas the "Good Girl" lessons are ones which people ought to follow, and which are the true Christian ways of leading lives.... To me, the Good Girl advises, that are written in the book, didn't seem Christian or even "unreal" (something, which the author keeps stressing on), they just seemed plain, common sense... the book just goes to show, how much West is lost and confounded, that it has to rely on books for plain, common sense.

The Indian youths that I mentioned earlier, who are experimenting with physical relationships, might read this book and see how much West has lost by not remaining true to it's values. No doubt in USA, Divorce Lawyers are the highest paid... Its really sad, and pitiable that somethings that ought to known from childhood are being rediscovered and packaged into a salable commodity, like the ideas in this book. The book talks about trust and love to be the keystone of every relationship, I think this isn't something that Westerners can get by reading, this is something that's gotta be in your psyche, an intuition which is in-bred...

I think its high time, we stop aping the West blindly, otherwise the time would not be far, when thousands will go to attend Marriage Conferences, (as they do in North America) and Divorce Lawyers, would be the only the only happy souls...