I was too stressed to appreciate that this wedding was celebrating the union of two people. To me the wedding was nothing more than a room filled with people, waiting to make audible judgements about the state of my physical appearance.

I grew up learning about sex from the books I read and the hushed conversations that followed in school later. I say sex and not intimacy, but there’s only so much intimacy featured within media and pop culture. Intimacy comes from people - and the people around me seemed to have no idea what it meant.

Remember sex scenes in Tamil movies? I'm talking about the close-ups of raindrops on petals, the montage of random outdoor sceneries, and everyone's favourite: the immediate cut to a colourful song and dance number. The absence of, or rather "creative" censorship, of intimacy and pleasure in Tamil movies left me terribly confused about sex.

My most salient memory of learning about reproductive health is the 'talk' Amma delivered when I was in my early 20s. "When you place cotton near a flame, it will catch on fire," she said. The message? Abstinence.

“At the age of 25, I made myself cum for the first time.”