Why Indians think that western Women are easy to have Sex with

Today I would like to tell you about an experience that we never had in this way before and we will take care that we will not have it again in future either. It once happened that one of our guests had an intimate relation with one of our employees. Yes, one of our western female guests had sex with one of our Indian male co-workers. You can imagine how surprised we were when we got to know. Let me tell you how it all came about.

The woman was a guest for several weeks, participating in one of our retreats. She was approximately 45 years old and in India for the first time. She really enjoyed her time here and obviously didn’t only enjoy our company but the company of our staff, too. Especially with one of them!

She told Ramona one evening that she had actually had had an intimate relation with one of them, a 20-year-old boy. They had kissed and had had sex but had kept it all hidden – until she told Ramona about it. She actually started with the words ‘You all probably already noticed…’ – and we later had to laugh that we had obviously been so blind to miss something like that in our own home.

It was a strange situation but we like to take things with humor and as positive as they can be. There were however obviously a whole lot of serious thoughts, too, that followed this incident. I guess no employer would be happy to hear such a thing about his employees and any hotel would have fired the boy. We did not.

We like to keep a nice relationship with our staff and decided that firing this young man would not change anything that happened. Anyway, it was also pretty clear, from talks with the lady and the young man himself, that it was an offer that had been made from her side which he had accepted. Why wouldn’t he be happy? Here in India, or at least in Vrindavan, there would hardly be any girl who would have slept with him without getting married first and putting a whole lot of responsibilities on his shoulders. And there was this exotic, white lady, older and more experiences than him and surprisingly available – I can understand how this happened, can’t you? We needed to make clear to our staff however that nothing like this should happen again.

You may not realize how delicate such a situation is here in India, especially when sex is involved. While several of the other staff members may have known about it, we couldn’t just go and say that this boy had slept with a guest. He would be so embarrassed, he would just leave the Ashram and run away. So we had a one-on-one talk, from man to man, and saved him from any embarrassment, putting him in a position that he could keep his job but clearly giving a sign to him and everyone else, too, not to get intimate with guests.

While this was, retrospectively, a funny episode of which we hope our staff learned something, there is one thought that remains and gives the whole thing a slightly sour note: the generalized image of the western woman in India does not get better with such episodes. Many Indians have a very wrong idea of how the ‘free sexual culture’ of the west really works. A lot of people think that westerners just sleep with everybody at any time. It is a stupid prejudice but through such episodes they see this confirmed – and it further harms this image.

But I guess we can be just happy now that our guest had a nice holiday and that we and our staff did everything to keep her happy – even if future guests may not be as fortunate to receive such special treatment.