the other day as i flipped channels and cajoled my brain to tune out i realised that the lead couple on star plus show yeh hain mohabbatein hadnt made love in 18 months no it isnt a spell in the desserts of intimacy they have never had sexthere i said it i used the dirtiest three letter word we know the subject of public shame and private voyeurism but raman and ishitas growing desperation to get some action got me thinking about indian televisions crisis of consummation to get or not to get laid that is the burning question discussed in great detail by producers writers and creative directors we sit like sadistic puppeteers making sure the characters we create are left turned on and waiting if they can do it then when do they do it how long can we keep the audience engaged hoping to see the lead pair canoodling more importantly what if the wafer thin plot crumbles once they are done with what should not even be a sub plotconsummation as we rather formally refer to it is a big tent pole in the shows life story we write build up episodes cut promos have meetings and then finally when the characters can barely keep their clothes on anymore we let them get naughty well as naughty as they can get while keeping their halo of nobility on also this may be the first and last time we see the couple actually acknowledging that they want to have sex and are capable of acting like mortals with needsbut sarcasm apart i have yet to see a show where the protagonists have a regular healthy sex life or a couple who discuss intimacy issues or address why they dont feel physically attracted to each other we still treat sex as the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow instead of a perfectly normal act that we have been doing since we were apes quite ironical indeed the sex lives of characters on television is inversely proportional to the indian population if people really took so long to get it on the government could easily spend a couple of hundred crores less on family planning measuresso then what is it about sex and the indian audiencedont get me wrong i am all for romance and taking things slowly i love cloying sappy love stories with lots of dramatic music and soulmates finding each other but what annoys me is our insistence on making a virtue out of abstinence its almost as if having sex makes our characters more base more human and less admirable perhaps it stems from the general taboo surrounding sex and the fact that most households dont acknowledge it as normal and necessary with their children we paint it as something wrong and dirty an act that good boys and girls dont do till they are married after which they are supposed to produce children immediatelyperhaps it serves to ennoble our protagonists more