Let’s talk about sex

Eighteen women, and first-time authors try their hand at writing about sex and humour. They share their journey and experiences.

When Rachna Chawla started writing on the subject of sex, she was wary of her children’s reaction to it. Now that the book she contributed to — Eighteen Plus Duets — has released, she says her children find it cool that their mother has written about something that people shy away from often. Eighteen Plus Duets, an amalgamation of short stories that talk about sex, often interspersing it with humour, is a sequel of sorts to Apurv Nagpal’s, Eighteen Plus, which released in 2013. The book derives its name from the fact that the short stories are written by eighteen women — all first time authors.

Rachna’s story, Losing the Stripes is about an incident between two people, who are getting ready for an “exciting evening” with a twist in the tale once they get home. When asked about her inspiration for the story, she says, “Like all stories, my story stems from reality. I have built it around certain moments, but also blown reality out of proportion and added some humour.” As a society that has always shied away from discussing sex openly, rounding up women — and first time authors at that — to write about it wasn’t an easy task, admits Apurv, the curator of the book. “The issue wasn’t that I was curating stories about sex, the issue was to figure out a way to curate the authors. A lot of them had surprising reactions when I approached them for this book. They were hesitant to write about this subject and come out in the public this way. Many of them were extremely hesitant about getting on this project. Many of them asked me if they could remain anonymous,” he says. Rachna, who works as a life coach in

Mumbai, thinks we are more open to the conversation of sex only when it comes to a cause. “I witness this every day — it is a part of my job. Men, women, everyone is willing to talk about sex when it comes to a cause — like sex education or rape; we aren’t open to healthier discussions regarding the subject. I wanted to write about sex in a way, which is fun and easy — not with statistics and studies. I wanted to write and let people, mostly women, around me know that sex can be fun too.”

Subarna Roy, who works with Universal Music, is generally a shy person. Therefore, the entire concept of writing on something like this felt exciting to her. “My story, Mr. Rockstar, has more to do with romance than sex. It is about a popular musician and the chemistry he shares with a girl who works for the music label that handles him,” she says.

All these women admit to having a ‘#YOLO’ (you only live once) attitude to this book, which gave them the much-needed push that they were looking for. The youngest contributor, 25-year-old Manali Bagawade, calls herself ‘the virgin author.’ “My generation is pretty open about sex; we discuss it naturally. And so, writing about it was no problem at all. I don’t know how the story has turned out though — I come with zero experience and writing about sex seems ironic,” she laughs. Apurv believes that men and women approach sex, romance, emotions and humour differently. “This was the whole idea behind the book. I wanted to capture exactly this — how differently they think about sex and the emotions attached to it. While curating and editing their stories, the most I did was edit grammar. If you read the book, the stories are by the women and for women — not a male writer penning down a woman’s perspective. These stories are truer to women than men,” he concludes.