At 91, Watsa remains India’s top sexologist.
By Raif Karerat
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A 91-year-old sexologist from India, Mahinder Watsa, who writes a popular tabloid column on sexuality in the Mumbai Mirror is still going strong and shows no signs of slowing down, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
Although most of his queries still come from men, Mahinder Watsa told AFP that more women are now seeking his daily dose of advice in the Mumbai Mirror.
“When I first started writing ‘Ask the Sexpert’, almost none of the letters I received were from women, but now it’s around 30%,” said Watsa, India’s leading sexologist, who gets about 80 queries a day.
“At the beginning women weren’t so frank, but now they are expressing themselves in ways that they never used to. Women are becoming more open and saying, ‘Well if men can have fun, why can’t we also’,” he added.
Watsa, an obstetrician and gynecologist by profession, has enlightened and entertained readers in India’s financial capital for over a decade with his nuggets of advice, which are often witty as well as educational.
“There are many states in India which don’t have sex education in schools so young people are left all on their own and there is a lot of confusion,” Watsa explained. “The point is, where do people get their knowledge from? Even today most doctors in India are not very experienced in dealing with sexuality problems.
Watsa pioneered the teaching of sex education through his work with the Family Planning Association of India before starting his column, but has faced opposition from conservative elements in the country.
He said he had encountered “resistance” to his workshops in the early years of his career.
“In the beginning people would get very upset when I put up a slide of a penis showing it diagrammatically. But then they started to get used to it,” he said.
In fact, in 2014 Watsa was given the Dr. Ved Vyas Puri Award by the Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) for his contributions to sex education in India, reported DNA India.
The sex therapist has just released a book titled “It’s Normal!”.