The Indelible Bonobo Experience

She told police she was due to leave the Agra Mahal hotel, near the Taj Mahal, on Tuesday morning for Jaipur, when the manager knocked on her door at 3.45am, and said he wanted to give her an oil massage and a shower. “I refused and asked him to leave but he was insistent,” she said. “I had to push him out with the door, and then I bolted the door. He remained outside my door trying to get in with his keys until 5am. I was shouting at him to stop harassing me, I told him I wanted him to go. “I was too scared to leave my room as he was waiting outside. I was kicking the door and shouting for help but no one came,” she said in a police statement, a copy of which was read to The Daily Telegraph by a senior officer. After 45 minutes, a second voice, believed to be that of the hotel’s security guard, joined the manager outside her room calling for her to unlock the door. “I shouted at them to stop harassing me but it continued,” she said. At 5am, the woman, who is now under police guard, escaped from a second-floor balcony by jumping more than 15 feet to another balcony below, narrowly avoiding falling more than 30 feet to the ground.

“I ran into the road but no one would stop,” she said, until an autorickshaw driver eventually slowed for her. “I begged him to take me to the tourist police station. A man approached him and tried to make him bring me back to the hotel. So I jumped out of the rickshaw and ran some more. The driver caught up with me and said he understood and took me to the police station.” (via British woman ‘screamed for help for an hour during attempted Indian sex attack’ - Telegraph)

A Swiss woman, centre, who, according to police, was gang-raped by a group of men while touring by bicycle with her husband, is escorted by policewomen for a medical examination at a hospital in Gwalior on Saturday. Police said they arrested five men Sunday in connection with the gang rape of a Swiss woman who was attacked in central India while on a cycling vacation with her husband. All five men admitted to the attack, which occurred Friday night as the woman and her husband camped out in a forest in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh state, said D. K. Arya, a senior police officer. The couple told police that the woman had been raped by seven or eight men, but that it was dark and they could not be sure of the exact number, Arya said. They said the husband also was attacked by the men. The woman, 39, was treated Saturday at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior and was released later that day, police said. (via Men arrested in India after Swiss tourist gang-raped - World - CBC News)

futurejournalismproject:

What’s in a Kiss: Indian Edition

Via The New York Times:

The Mahabharata, an epic poem written 3,000 years ago, is believed to include the first written description of mouth-to-mouth kissing. But anthropological studies done over the past century in India and elsewhere in Asia showed that kissing was far from universal and even seen as improper by many societies, said Elaine Hatfield, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii.

Sanjay Srivastava, a professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth at Delhi University, said: “Until recently, kissing was seen as Western and not an Indian thing to do. That has changed.”…

…A pivotal screen kiss reflected the changing romantic landscape here. Kissing scenes were banned by Indian film censors until the 1990s, and Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood heartthrob who is one of the world’s biggest movie stars, has been teasing Indian audiences in dozens of films since then by bringing his lips achingly close to those of his beautiful co-stars. But his lips never touched any of theirs until he kissed the Bollywood bombshell Katrina Kaif in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which was released in December 2012.

Mr. Khan tried to soften the impact by saying in a published interview that his director made him do it. But the cultural Rubicon had been crossed.

“That kiss was an incredibly important moment,” Dr. Srivastava said. “Shah Rukh Khan defines what is mainstream. If he does it, it becomes acceptable.”

Kissing’s rise here may also reflect the growing power of young women in deciding who to marry, said Debra Lieberman, an assistant professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Miami. In many cases, “women are now able to select mates without having to negotiate as much with family members,” Dr. Lieberman said.

And Dr. Avdesh Sharma, a psychiatrist practicing in New Delhi, said that his younger female patients are far more insistent than their mothers were that their emotional needs be met. That often involves kissing, he said…

…Prakash Kothari, the founder of the department of sexual medicine at Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Mumbai, said that his female patients are much more demanding than they once were.

“For years, most Indian men used sex with their partners as a kind of sleeping pill, and few devoted any time to foreplay,” Dr. Kothari said. “Now, many women are able to ask for what they want.”

New York Times, In India, Kisses Are on Rise, Even in Public.

Image: Sculpture from the Khajuraho Group of Monuments in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

soon, they’ll import Valentine’s too :)