I was born and brought up in the Indian capital city, New Delhi. Even though my family was relatively liberal, I grew up in a culture where talking about sex, or even uttering the word ‘sex’ in front of an adult was blasphemous. My friends and I, like millions of other Indian kids, satisfied our sexual curiosity till the late 90’s mostly through Porn magazines.
My first ever exposure to a porn video was when I was thirteen. One of my uncles had returned from a trip to Europe, and while scouting for chocolates through his bag, my brother and I came across a cassette tape with ‘European Fantasies’ printed on it. That day as I sat in front of the TV and saw Caucasian men and women having sex, I could not have imagined that years later watching people have sex on the screen will turn into a full-blown addiction.
By the time I was 25, I was deeply addicted to hardcore porn and utterly oblivious to the addiction. The rude awakening came when one day, I realized that I preferred watching porn over having sex with my extremely attractive girlfriend. That day I asked myself the question, what is wrong with me?
Although it took me another year to realize that I was addicted to porn and then another four years to stop watching it, I still feel that the day when I asked myself ‘what is wrong with me’ was the pivotal moment when I started fighting my porn addiction.
India quite famously has the largest number of youngsters in the world. More than 500 million Indians are under the age of 35. Add to this the fact that India has easy access to cheap smartphones and some of the cheapest internet data rates on the planet. All this youthful sexual energy with no sex education and cheap access to the internet, and you have the perfect fertile ground for a porn epidemic.
After having fought my own porn addiction, I instantly had the urge to help other Indians you were silently suffering. I also wanted to highlight the importance of comprehensive sex education at a very young age, which is why I decided to write the book ‘Pornistan’.
By Aditya Gautam, author
;