MAKING MEN STAND TALL

Veteran hollywood actor Jack Nicholson has admitted to popping it before threesomes. Former US presidential candidate Bob Dole took it too during trials and has became its ambassador. Even a woman—Samantha Jones, the fictional character in the sitcom Sex and The City—tried it for greater sexual pleasure.
Closer home, Bollywood’s original casanova Salman Khan is rumoured to be on it, which could explain his untiring cycle of relationships, even after 40. 

Powerful and rich men the world over have bowed in solidarity before the tiny, blue, diamond-shaped pill called Viagra, the first oral treatment to correct erectile dysfunction that has just completed 10 years of its arrival in sextopia. And the women have never had such rocking fun. No wonder birthday celebrations abound for this 10-year-old, with Internet forums spilling over with recounts of Viagra-fuelled “rocket launches’ in otherwise dreary bedrooms. And YouTube is  swarming with videos of hawkers selling the pill on streets the world over—from Iraqi traders selling it to US soldiers in Baghdad to a desi artist doing a satirical demo of using the pill to an amused audience in Meerut. 

Don’t stoop, stand erect
A major sociological impact of Viagra in India, say andrologists, has been the resurgence of geriatric sexuality. Many patients complaining of erectile dysfunction are above 50 years of age. “Indian grandparents are now rekindling their sexual lives, thanks to the availability of an easy treatment of a problem that accompanies old age—a paradigm shift in a culture where separate bedrooms are the norm after 50,” says Sudhakar Krishnamurti, director of Andromeda Andrology Centre, Hyderabad. 

Krishnamurti’s oldest patient was 86-year-old Gangaram Reddy. Tall, dark and bald with a few grey strands on the temple, Reddy had not been getting firm erections for over three months. His second marriage to 46-year-old Sunita was saved thanks to a prescription of Viagra after which Reddy resumed having normal erections. Since then, he’s been getting refills of the pill.

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