Here’s an early holiday present from me to you. For the whole of this week, each day I’ll be posting a query letter that led to a sale. The published pieces are all available online. If you read them, you’ll notice that the queries often look different to the pieces, because once the editor gets involved, his or her vision becomes part of the final product as well.

I sent this query to Ms. Magazine in July 2007, it was published a year later. This was my first assignment for them.

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Dear X:

Six states in India banned sex education in schools late last month, saying that the course material was too explicit, encouraged sexual conduct in young people, and was against the Indian culture.

To discipline students further, two high schools in Mumbai came up with another rule: girls and boys will not be allowed to touch each other. If they happen to brush against each other by accident, they’ll be penalized.

In a rapidly developing India, where pre-marital sex is still considered taboo (even though reportedly a quarter of the nation’s youth admit to engaging in it), and the generation gap has become a gaping hole, more and more young people are fumbling for reliable information on sex, contraceptive choices and methods. Even in educated India, the inhibitions and taboos surrounding sex make information inaccessible.

But education is just the first step. Getting access to contraceptives is a whole other battle. When Nikki B. went to the local pharmacy to buy the morning-after pill, the looks from the men across the counter, she says, made her feel like a prostitute. The next time, she went with her boyfriend and pretended to be married to him before making the purchase.

Doctors act as moral police, too. When patients reveal that they are unmarried, several of them are given lectures, stern looks, or are completely dismissed. The result is a large number of youngsters who feel reluctant to approach doctors and health workers about their sexual health, and are as a consequence, susceptible to STDs, genital infections, even AIDS. Abortions among unwed mothers continue to be on the rise.

Not surprisingly, this moral policing is directed mostly at women.

Would this be a story you might be interested in? I’ll talk about the lack of willingness among parents to talk to their children (especially girls) about sex, interview women from different generations to get their takes on the issue, and talk to health and education experts to find out what this means for the future of India’s youth.

[My bio]

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Resultant piece: Have They Forgotten the Kama Sutra?