Never too old: Sex counsellor Dr Mahinder Watsa.

Never too old: Sex counsellor Dr Mahinder Watsa. Photo: Atil Loke/Panos

DR MAHINDER Watsa is 89 and writes a daily newspaper column answering readers' questions about their sexual problems. Is he the world's oldest sex counsellor? Probably. He says although he's never had a dull moment, he's fed up with masturbation.

The Indian male's obsessive fear of the ''damage'' caused by masturbation has been a constant throughout his career and shows no sign of letting up. Angst-ridden letters continue to pour into his letterbox and computer inbox. Concerns about the ''evils'' of masturbation feature prominently in his consultations at the clinic he runs at his home in the Mumbai suburb of Dadar West.

Sitting in his third-floor flat, with a warm breeze from the Arabian Sea drifting in through the french windows, Watsa says masturbation has plagued him for decades. Every generation in India replays the same fears - fears that are identical to the misconceptions that used to surround the ''solitary vice'' in the West two centuries ago.

Masturbation makes you infertile, causes pimples, makes you impotent, makes hair grow on the palm of your hand, leads to weakness, stops teenagers growing and even culminates in madness.

''I try to put them right when they are young by explaining it is totally harmless and normal,'' he says. ''But it comes back to haunt them at different stages of their lives. When they are married, it is, 'Will I be able to have children because I masturbated when I was young?'

''When they get older and their erections weaken, it is, 'Is this because of my earlier bad habit?' It's one obsession that is a universal Indian trait, even now.''

Watsa, an obstetrician and gynaecologist by training, decided to leave his practice in the mid-1970s and turn to sex education because of what he regarded as Indians' shocking ignorance about sex and their lack of knowledge even about basic human anatomy.

This, he says, has not changed. In this very conservative society, sex is certainly going on - witness the 1.2 billion population - but any discussion of it is regarded as obscene.

The general ignorance in the population is one thing. Where women are concerned, however, they are meant to be ignorant about sex. Apart from the educated, urban elite, every other social class expects women to be virgins when they get married. If they show the slightest knowledge about carnal matters, from the way they move their bodies or touch their husbands during their first lovemaking, the husband will be suspicious.

''A man who had no sexual experience married a woman who happened to have received some basic sex education at her Catholic school,'' Watsa says. ''The first time they made love, neither had any idea what to do. So she made a suggestion. He was so horrified that she seemed to know about sex that he divorced her.''

Even educated couples (he nominates dentists and engineers) come to him unsure how to consummate their marriage. Sometimes Watsa resorts to drawing diagrams to put them right.

Others think anal sex is the conventional and reproductive form of intercourse. One man who was of this view was disabused of it by Watsa and he and his wife went on to finally have a child. The proud father still sends him a box of sweets every year on his child's birthday.

In this climate of ignorance, nourished by India's army of quacks, myths tend to flourish: a woman can't get pregnant if it's her first time, or sleeping with a virgin can ''cleanse'' you of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Indian society's expectations about how women should be or behave also creates much emotional anguish. When he used to write a column about women's general health in a Mumbai magazine in the 1970s, Watsa says he received many cris de coeur from women who were not virgins and were about to get married.

''A girl said her parents had arranged her marriage but she was going to commit suicide because a male relative in the family had sexually assaulted her in her childhood and she was scared that her husband would realise she was not a virgin,'' he says.

''There was no one I could refer her to. Doctors knew nothing about these problems then. So I took it up myself.''

Watsa was a pioneer of sex counselling and education when he began and he now runs workshops to educate other sex counsellors. He has written regular columns for magazines and websites and now, thanks largely to his daily Q&A in the popular tabloid newspaper Mumbai Mirror, he has become almost a household name in the city.

''Every month, he gets about 8000 queries,'' says Meenal Baghel, the editor of the Mumbai Mirror.

''He's vastly popular, not just because he is upfront and direct about sex, unusual in India, but because he is very practical.''

Baghel says she loves having lunch with Watsa because she gets to hear all the unbelievable stories that can't be published in the paper.

Many Indian sexual problems have not changed because they are rooted in the culture - a bride's virginity and fear of masturbation are prime examples.

The masturbation neurosis lurks in many a male mind owing to a Hindu belief in the ''magical'' properties of semen, that every time semen is lost it causes weakness in the body and mind and deprives the body of a ''life force''.

People also believe ''well-preserved'' semen produces a male child and that semen is a distillation of blood.

Watsa says he is fed up with telling patients this is nonsense but the conviction won't go away.

Mahatma Gandhi, famous for his sexual experiments with young women as part of his efforts to test his celibacy, bears some responsibility for validating this belief, also propagated by Hindu ascetics and spiritual leaders.

Gandhi wrote about how he used to sleep with his 19-year-old grandniece to practise celibacy and retain his semen.

Any number of Hindu websites contain articles talking of how it takes 80 drops of blood to produce a single drop of semen. The even odder thing about this irrational obsession is that when it comes to other bodily fluids, Hindus are obsessed with ejecting them from their bodies, which is why there is much noisy hawking, spitting and preoccupation with metronome-like bowel movements.

Two other common sexual problems are also rooted in the culture: couples under family pressure to conceive within months of getting married and the blame falling on the wife if no child is conceived. ''I had a 28-year-old woman from a rural background with no child. I told the husband to get a sperm count done,'' Watsa says.

''Before he could do it, she jumped into a well because the family kept blaming her. It's only when men remarry, after divorcing their wife for so called infertility, that they realise it's their problem because they can't conceive with the second wife either.''

In his 50-word answers for the Mumbai Mirror, Watsa packs a punch. Direct, blunt and often humorous, his answers are popular for their sheer readability.

His advice is always humane, which angers traditionalists no end. For example, if a terrified woman who is not a virgin is getting married and writes to him for advice, he advises her to sprinkle a few drops of blood on the sheets on the first night. He tells homosexuals there is nothing wrong with them. He urges the parents of homosexuals to love and support them.

Unsurprisingly, the gentle and soft-spoken doctor gets hate mail. There are currently two complaints against him registered with police, alleging he is corrupting the young and propagating indecency.

Since sex education in India is still a haphazard affair, taught in some private schools but not in most government schools, the PowerPoint presentations with frank images he uses to train sex counsellors horrify conservatives. On several occasions, religious leaders in the audience have shouted him down, hurled tomatoes at him and abused him for being a ''pornographer''.

But the Justice Verma committee, set up to propose reforms following the December gang rape of a female student on a Delhi bus, has recommended sex education in schools, not just to inform children but also to tackle stereotypical notions of women, such as the idea girls are the repository of the family's ''honour''.

While many aspects of Indian sexual behaviour have remained static over the past few decades, others have changed: women are more willing to consult Watsa either on their own or with their husbands; more homosexuals are coming out; more married women are unabashed about satisfying their own sexual needs, even if it is with the driver or a toy boy; and older couples seek to continue to enjoy a sex life.

As he prepares to see the first patient of the afternoon, Watsa talks of how these days he is often recognised at social functions in Mumbai.

At a recent wedding, a former female patient pointed to him, telling her young son: ''That man is responsible for your coming into the world.'' As eyebrows rose around the room, a mortified Watsa didn't quite know where to look.

Amrit Dhillon is a Delhi-based journalist.