By no means is this intended to be an authoritative treatise on Indian sexuality. Just a piece stoked by the personal interest of a man in his 40s surrounded by friends who often talk about sex in our all-boys club. By all accounts, everybody seems to be boning all of the time, or at least that’s how it sounds to me.

Is all of this male chest-thumping? Or is something the matter with me, I have often wondered in private moments.

The question exacerbated itself last week when my wife and I finally got around to watching The Man Who Knew Infinity. Starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons, this movie is about Srinivasa Ramanujan, the much acclaimed Indian mathematician who died at 32 in April 1920. A fleeting scene in the film struck a note in my head. Ramanujan’s wife is waiting for him on their conjugal bed. But he continues to lie on the floor, oblivious to her presence, thinking up answers to complex mathematical problems in his head.

I couldn’t help but extrapolate that moment into our contemporary lives. By all accounts, most of us live in and manage complex circumstances. The wife is the “house manager" and the husband is an “ATM" that goes to work so that he may be replenished at the end of each month.

Over the years, both roles have merged and things are even more complex. So, a lot of the “management" like “child rearing" and “housekeeping" gets outsourced—either to the domestic help or one set of grandparents, whichever is easier. But something has to give in someplace. And my hypothesis is that it is sex.

Now, all kinds of reports exist on what is the ideal number of times a married couple ought to have sex. By all accounts, consensus exists that twice or thrice a week is just about okay from a man’s perspective in the longer run. Most people, it seems, can do with more. But all of these are American numbers. I looked hard, but couldn’t find anything India-specific. So, I thought I might as well mount a study.

I zeroed in on 12 friends, all of whom I have known for a long time, and know will be brutally honest with me. Pardon me ladies, but no women were part of this survey because I am part of an “All-Boys Club”. We like it that way because:

1. We are in our early 40s.

2. We got married 10-15 years ago.

3. We keep long hours.

4. We discovered sex at pretty much the same time—and that was a pretty damn long time ago.

5. When we “boys" meet up, we continue talking about our “awesome sex lives" and those “booty calls" we made in the “good old days".

My questions to each of them were simple:

1. Cut the jazz and tell me, how many times exactly do you have sex in a month?

2. Do you make time for booty calls?

The answers varied.

1. One said he hasn’t had sex in years because of a medical condition.

2. Two of them said they made out with their wives a few times in a year. Not for anything else, but because their definition of sex has changed from “making out" to “spending quality time" with each other.

3. Seven of them told me it averaged two to four times a month.

4. One said he could do with more, but time permitted only six times a month.

5. The only outlier was a bloke who finds time for 20 sessions.

6. Everybody climaxed after anywhere between eight to 30 minutes of the act.

7. There was consensus on one thing: “There is no bandwidth to deal with booty calls any more."

Armed with this limited data, I turned to a few people whom I thought can offer me some perspective. The first calls were made to Anugra Misra, a New Delhi-based psychiatrist, and Kuldeep Datay, a Mumbai-based psychologist whom I turn to often for the routine dump.

“What is wrong with your friends? They ought to be having way more sex. They need help," Misra guffawed over the phone. The outlier doesn’t because 20 times is good. “As for the jokers talking about sex morphing into quality time, it is all bullshit," he thundered. “There is no substitute to good sex."

Datay’s response was more nuanced. There seems to be a direct linkage between high IQ and libido, he said, adding that “men with high IQ may have a lower libido".

When I looked it up, there are many studies which prove that this is indeed the case. For instance, consider this paper published in The Cambridge Student Psychology Journal on “Sex and Intelligence". It posits a number of theories, all of which I thought were rather interesting.

Datay’s take is that it is entirely possible these men get a high out of whatever it is they are doing and that they “don’t need sex to complete themselves or who they are. Their chosen vocation does that for them." Or the two friends of mine who have sex only once in a blue moon.

“It’s actually the first sign that something is the matter with a relationship," Misra countered. “They are just trying to avoid each other. This is a polite way to go about it."

That said, I couldn’t help but wonder if Datay is indeed right—what about the sex maniac that was Albert Einstein? For that matter, that great philosopher Bertrand Russell, comedian Charlie Chaplin or, more recently, Bill Clinton? These are men with high IQ who couldn’t keep their zippers in place.

In trying to answer the question, Desmond Morris, one of my favourite zoologists, writes in The Telegraph: “Novel sexual experiences, for instance, suddenly seem irresistible. It is not the mating act itself that is so important—that varies very little. It is the thrill of the chase and the excitement of a new conquest that drives them on. Once the conquest has been made, the novelty of the affair soon wears off and another chase is begun. Each illicit episode involves stealth and secrecy, tactics and strategy, and the terrifying risk of discovery, making it the perfect metaphor for the primeval hunt."

“It’s a hypothesis," says Datay, but that need not necessarily be true across the board. “Then there are all kinds of biochemistry at work," he adds. By way of example, he points to something that is popularly called the “fidelity gene" that was discovered a few years ago in a mammal called the vole.

There are two kinds of voles. The monogamous kind and the playboy kind. Scientists have discovered that by simply altering a single gene, the Casanovas become tame versions of their monogamous cousins, who are now a minority, comprising only 5% of the family.

When all is said and done, both Misra and Datay concur that both of these types—the ones who have too little sex and those who seek too much—are exceptions. They need to seek professional intervention. But as I articulated at the outset, this isn’t intended to be an exhaustive treatise on Indian sexuality—it’s just a set of personal observations.

So, I called yet another interesting man—Biju Dominic, the CEO of Final Mile Consulting—and presented my so-called findings. His is a company that studies human behaviour and suggests techniques to meet marketing, organizational and social needs. He is deeply embedded in the Catholic church as well and spends a lot of time counselling couples.

“I find it incredible," he said, “that in the land of the Kamasutra, we place a premium on being a brahmacharya. Celibacy is placed on a pedestal in our country and it cuts across all religions."

I couldn’t agree more. What else explains the ridiculousness with which successive governments have swept Mahatma Gandhi’s sexual peccadillos under the carpet. On the one hand, the man preached celibacy; on the other hand, in his sexual life, he was a wreck, by all accounts.

“It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife," he wrote in Indian Opinion, a newspaper he published then.

“In India, as a thumb rule, we don’t understand the difference between sex for intimacy and sex for procreation," says Dominic. By way of example, he asks a rhetorical question. 

“How many couples in their 40s do you see hold hands or walk together in public? You can’t hope to just rush into the bedroom and get into the act. There is no room for public display of affection in our country, which is very important for a woman. I actually advise couples that sex begins much before the bedroom. In the Indian context, even holding your wife in front of the children is looked down upon. Why? What for?"

The way Dominic looks at it is that in much the same way a priest looks at the altar as sacred, a couple ought to treat their bedroom. It is theirs and theirs alone. And it is the duty of spiritual leaders to tell that to their followers that in as many words. But as Indians, all of us shy away from it. “So, how can the frequency of having sex increase?" he asks.

When confronted with these questions at a conference called by Pope Francis, the current head of the Catholic church, the Indian delegation raised an objection. They argued that our divorce rates are the lowest anywhere in the world. To which the pope retorted: “Sure, you don’t have divorces in your marriages. But do you have passion in your marriages?"

Dominic says he couldn’t agree more. “Intimacy is practically missing," he says. “When a girl gets married in India, she is always told she isn’t getting married to a man, but to a family and that she’s got to get used to their way of life and living. Imagine the pulls and pressures it puts on her."

And here, Dominic says, the problem begins with the man. “They are cocooned for all of their lives by their families. That is why Indian men don’t learn how to speak and deal with emotional complexity. So, nothing passionate can emerge out of them in a long-term relationship either. That is something Indian families, particularly the mothers to whom the sons belong, have to understand as well."

So, where does that leave me? All I can offer you is this.

1. I was not part of the sample. So, you can infer nothing about me from this “study".

2. Do take time out to read The Man’s Guide to Women by John Gottman. A female friend first suggested I read it. Bless her.