The survey spoke to 2,035 unmarried women in the age group of 18-30 across 11 cities-Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Bangalore-in upper income categories. About 62 per cent of the respondents were graduates (general/professional) or more qualified. One third were working and 54 per cent were students.

A smaller survey of 517 unmarried men from the same cities was also carried to see how different they were from the women of their age, whether they knew what women wanted and how different their behaviour and preferences were.

Street corner sampling was used to find eligible respondents. The eligible women were invited to a central location while street corner interviews were done for men. These respondents were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire, which were put in a ballot box by the respondents to ensure anonymity. This was the technique used in our 2004 survey of men.

Radhika Chopra, Sociologist
"With Eyes Wide Open"

Women are blending what their parents told them with their desires.

A foreign couple in a bid to be "Indian" recently got married on the banks of the Pushkar Lake in Rajasthan. At the end of the ceremony, the bride and groom, following their own tradition, kissed to seal their bond. There was an outcry among the gathered audience. It was clear to them that this hybrid couple was not Indian and their ways were all wrong. The kiss sealed their cultural fate.

Condemning kissing as "foreign" is arcane. For most young single urban Indian women and men, sex is really important in their lives. Venerable swadeshi ways do not rule their intimate lives. Blokes in the stockmarket who are in a constant uproar about foreign direct investment also seem to think that being Indian no longer implies being swadeshi. Non-Indian money and non-Indian business practices are ceaselessly chased as the engines of a dream future that will drive India into super serious status, giving CEOs, BPOs, Bapajis, Hellojis and God knows who else a place at the round tables of global power. But within the four walls of their homes, are all these raging bulls as committed to "foreign ways", particularly for their children? Or would they rather that their offspring swore to remain socially swadeshi and junked any thoughts of going global?

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what going global means for that all important lot-"The Youth of India". They're wooed as consumers, admonished as spoilt brats, marked out as the numerically dominant face of a dramatic new demographic profile. Advertisers who claim to have a finger on the social pulse of modern Indian society have planted Shah Rukh Khan in a bath tub with rose petals because they are certain there are young women who'd like to see him naked, and in their tubs. They are right. Young single women do fantasise about film stars and The Khan in foam is likely to go down well.

But parents whose daughters and sons are single, working and between the ages of 18 and 30, and who fear the fantasies of their children, should hold the gripe and tears. True, there is a seismic shift in kissing norms and sexual experiences that has emerged from broadening horizons-more travel, movies, TV channels-a cultural foreign direct investment if you will. But equally, young women in small towns or large metros who have already had their first "serious" relationship by the time they are 18 don't think highly of premarital sex and are only willing to consider it if they feel a commitment to the relationship or to their partners. According to the India Today-AC Nielsen-ORG-MARG survey, girls in their late adolescence will have kissed and held hands well before they were married but they are unlikely to jump into bed with the nearest available man. The really interesting thing about these young women though is their view on what sex means to them. For most sex is really important in their lives. But well over half also said that being in love was necessary to having sex. The great thing is that they felt as entitled to sexual pleasure as men, and aren't willing to grant a man the sole privilege of pleasure. Pyar main yeh naya twist.

Most of them preferred prolonged sexual encounters to quickies but also thought that marriage and long term relationships were desirable. So even though 49 per cent of the women in Hyderabad, 42 per cent in Mumbai and 35 per cent in Delhi said they found nothing objectionable in a live-in relationship, they didn't think of it as an end in itself. They clearly felt it should lead to marriage. And while a high proportion still felt that a woman should remain a virgin till she married they weren't willing to grant "extra licence" to their potential husbands-as far as they were concerned a man should also not have had sex before marrying them.

It's quite evident that young women think about sex with their eyes wide open and their minds uncluttered by preconception. The naïve and gullible virgin on her first marital night is passé. Big city and small town girls are clear that their partners should use condoms, and they couldn't care less about the argument that condoms decrease pleasure. There's a healthy fear of aids and only a minuscule percentage (8) said they didn't know about it. They have thought about the boundaries they would like to draw and what's acceptable. They have no compunction in saying that oral sex is all right because it means that women won't get pregnant or that it's not the same as having intercourse.

They will also be able to tell you right away what part of a man's anatomy they find sexy-face and eyes-exploding the usual Hollywood myth of broad chests and butts in denim satisfying a woman's fantasy. Modern Indian women have clear sexual preferences and aren't afraid of expressing them. Single women in Hyderabad love to look at themselves in the mirror while having sex, though young girls in Bangalore, Kolkata and Lucknow are more conservative and rush off to bathe after a bout of sex, no doubt imitating their suchchi bai aunties in purification rituals.

The biggest problem that young women face in their bid to be sexual revolutionaries is that urban public spaces are still extremely violent and a kissing couple in a park is likely to be stared at, catcalled and harassed for money or even sexually threatened. Since many of the girls don't share their thoughts or experiences about sex with their parents-in fact, many don't even tell their parents that they date-their own homes are not spaces in which they can safely meet their boyfriends. So between a world going global and a family seeking to remain static traditionalists, at least with regard to its daughters' desires, a young urban woman in 2005 has to scuttle between utmost secrecy and daring experimentation to figure out her sexual identity.

Fortunately, young single men also seem to be more progressive. Premarital sex is coupled with commitment and extramarital sex is not okay. Half of these men think love is an essential ingredient in a sexual relationship and like their female peers expect a live-in relation to lead to marriage. They're less convinced about the necessity of their own virginity before marriage and a tad traditional in expecting a girl to be a virgin when she marries. But that a woman is entitled to sexual pleasure in bed is endorsed by a majority of young men, so women can heave a thankful sigh that they won't be faced with a slam-bam-thank you ma'am lover who pulls on his Jockeys and strolls away after a bout in bed.

A society whose women are sexually confident is a civilised place. Middle class India hasn't quite got there yet. Ingesting a foreign world wholescale is not the view of young single urban women; if anything their pyar ki kahani is a creative post-modern process that blends what their parents told them and what they'd really like to know-and do.