“..ahaan…so what’s your favourite position in bed baby?” is how any normal conversation with a stranger in Pakistan can turn into without a warning these days. They expect you to name a numerical figure corresponding to their question, to further excite their perverse senses, when the only number you really feel like telling them is the size of your chappal. Our country has ‘discovered’ sex and booze like they were invented yesterday and this has come to us at the cost of love, trust and even consent at times.

Stimulating conversations where people explored one another have been swiftly replaced with sexting, and sending nudes to random people has become as common as muck. Now all this may give one the impression that Pakistani society is on the verge of some great sexual revolution but that is far from the truth. The knee-jerk change from a social space built primarily on arranged marriages to a community of lust-driven beasts on the prowl has caused people to lead dual, hypocritical lives. There is a religious self for the world and another self who is locked away on smartphones and laptops.

At the heart of the problem, lies a rapid increase in the number of porn addicts; it is an issue few are even willing to acknowledge let alone address properly. With a screen attached to every phone, the better part of the day for most is spent happily lapping up pornographic videos. This has caused in our Eastern-minded Pakistani men to categorise women into two extreme categories; if she’s not a fully-clothed Baaji (sister) then she is safely presumed to be a promiscuous woman, like in those salacious clips. She is deemed available for consumption, be it in bazaars through groping, or being taken to seedy guesthouses for a romp, on the pretext of a future marriage on the cards. The rise in paedophilia and rapes also point towards sexual frustration that has gripped our people.

The recent uproar over Mahira Khan’s leaked pictures with Ranbir Kapoor was just a small sample of the nation’s discomfort with its own sexuality. After all, Khan was doing in public what they indulge in privately hence the anger and name-calling. Some overzealous folks even went as far as questioning if the actress was even a Muslim anymore, after wearing that short white dress. You see in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, we like playing God to other people on a daily basis, so long as it saves us from active self-introspection.

Alcohol, on the other hand, is simply available by messaging a bootlegger for a price list: bottles of Chardonnay and Black Label are then quickly delivered, wrapped in brown paper bags (for security purposes) to a location of your choice. Every taboo we like to turn up our noses at is omnipresent, spoken about in whispers perhaps, but never marked completely absent on the attendance sheet.

The dynamics of the urban dating world have also been affected by the onslaught of sleaze. With several tempting options available for both men and women, the new rules have ensured that no one ends up with anyone anymore. So it is not strange to find people sticking to only using terms of endearment such as Baby or Jaanu for their temporary partner – that saves them from the effort of learning new names altogether.

“But yaar all this is common in the West too,” is the confused fool’s cover-up for wayward behaviour. Not many are able to comprehend and digest the difference between taking pride and having charge over one’s sexuality, sexual harassment and plain emotional fraud in today’s afra tafreeh ka mahaul (helter-skelter environment). Those looking for good old-fashioned values in man-woman relationships are in for disappointment. In wanting to keep up with the world, we have let go of all that was once beautiful, native and envied about Eastern bonds. In the long run, excessive indulgence in instant gratification will pave the way for lonely hearts; emotional instability is bound to haunt people as they continue looking for fast food love.