India's Daughter Ch. 01

Note from author: This is my first attempt at writing a story. When starting it, I had only the faintest idea of where i wanted to go with it. Basically I'm letting the characters guide me rather than the other way round.

None of the characters of this story are or will be involved in sexual situations below the age of 18.

As such the story will take its time getting to the sex part of it, but i hope the build up will be worth it.

I have been reading erotica for a long time and as such have been bitterly disappointed by the quality of erotica based in India and/or Indians on various sites. Through this story I'm making an attempt to fill this gap.

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India, in the 21st century, is a country at war with itself- a battle fought not so much with guns and violence as with ideas.

A closed, highly regulated economy till the early '90s, the rapid liberalization and globalization that followed, has left the nation in a state of flux where there is not just a generation gap but a chasm between the pre- and post- liberalization generations. The said war is evenly contested - on the one hand, there is the vigor and reach of youth and mass media... on the other, the brute force of entrenched customs and prejudices.

One of the countless battles of this war was being fought in the small town of Kalwa, Maharashtra on the west coast of India by participants who were neither aware nor interested in the greater war around them.

The chief protagonists of our story are students of a medical school in the town.

Nidhi Sinha was a fresh-faced, 18 yr old girl when she entered this place which was to change the course of her life. Born and raised in a mid-middle class family in the country's financial capital Mumbai, Nidhi was hardly different from the innumerable other girls and boys who were to be her classmates for the next 5 yrs.

She was the youngest member of her joint family- apart from her parents and elder brother, this included her uncle and aunt and their 2 sons plus her grandparents. As may be imagined, as the only girl in the house, she was treated as a princess. She had only to ask for something and invariably within a day or two, she would have it. However, far from spoiling her, as it surely would've most others, this love made her deeply attached and obedient to her family.

At the time our story begins, Nidhi was the perfect poster girl for the modern India... a mixture of ideal daughter and ambitious youth.

All through school, Nidhi was at the top of her class. A favorite of her teachers, she was nevertheless popular among her classmates as well. Eloquent, fun loving and with a sense of humor, Nidhi made friends wherever she went. Tall for an Indian girl at 5' 9", she was the star basketball player of her school team.

Her school being an all-girls convent, there was little opportunity to meet guys, let alone date. The guys she came in contact with through her basketball meets were usually too interested in showing off to bother striking up an intelligent conversation.

Not that they didn't try. With the thick, shiny black hair, dark kohl-lined eyes that sparked with boundless life and a cute, if not beautiful face, no teenager in his right (or indeed wrong) mind, was ever gonna ignore Nidhi.

Her body, toned by sports, but not emaciated by 'diet', was enough to interest even those a bit out of her age group.

Although she had rather modest breasts, which she made no effort whatsoever to enhance in her standard sports bras, the sight of her, with her hair pulled up at the back of her head, her taut ass encased in body hugging shorts, long smooth legs that went on for miles, with sweat coating her skin and soaking through her clothes was sufficient to drive the guys crazy with lust as they watched her play.

In spite of the attention she received from the guys, three things held Nidhi back from dating.

One was the inability of the guys she met to keep up an intelligent conversation. Being extremely smart herself, she expected the guys she met to at least have a few brain cells in their skulls.

The second, and for her far more important reason, was her family. Conservative in a peculiarly urban-middle class-Indian way, they perfectly encapsulated the struggle for India's soul. It was perfectly normal for them to, for example, have a best friend belonging to a different religion/caste... but the idea of an inter-caste marriage was still something of a culture shock.

This pseudo-conservatism extended in particular to their daughter's love life. While she was allowed, even encouraged to wear modern clothes and watch Western movies/tv shows, the idea that their daughter would actually wish to date someone was unimaginable.

The third reason was fear, plain and simple. All her life Nidhi had excelled at everything she attempted. Be it studies or sports or being president of the Student's Council, it all came to her easily and naturally. But when it came to matters of love, particularly the physical aspects of a relationship, she was terrified. Afraid of failure. Afraid of not living upto expectations.

Not that Nidhi was by any means a prude or free of the urges of a healthy teenager. However, lack of opportunity and her varied activities buried these urges so that she was rarely conscious of their presence.

Still, there were times, in the shower or late at night lying in her bed, when her lust burst through and left her craving for things she did not quite understand. Part of a society where girls are assumed to be essentially devoid of lust, and pleasure from sex is supposed to be only for men, any advice from her parents was of course out of question. Unaccustomed to being anything other than a leader on all topics, Nidhi shied away from getting involved in any gossip within the girls of her school on this subject, which would have entailed displaying her lack of knowledge of the subject.

Thus, a girl who in the Western sense would be considered a mixture of head cheerleader, prom queen and valedictorian all rolled into one, would be, in terms of her sexuality the equivalent of a classic 'nerd'. No boyfriend, barely a 'date' or two..that too usually just to provide a chaperone to one of her more worldly friends on their dates.

Nidhi Sinha, on the face of it just another girl in a city choc-a-block with all sorts, personified in many ways, the country she was born in. The paradox between intelligence and naivète, between ambition and obedience, desire and its repression could easily characterize a nation unsure whether to cling on to its glorious past or fling itself headlong into a promising but unpredictable future.

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