A compendium of erotic love

Aradhika Sharma

To capture 3,000 years of Indian erotic writing in a single anthology could be a daunting task, but the editor, Amrita Narayanan, has pulled it off with style. The material in the form of poetry, extracts, essays and treatise have been drawn from ancient Indian texts juxtaposed with writings by contemporary Indian authors.  The resulting book is, thus, a reflection on the philosophy of erotic love and sex — not an easy feat to accomplish.

The material has been obtained from vastly varying sources. The matter could as well be excavated from “the erotic wisdom of the ancient texts’ and sourced from the Upanishads or Sanskrit verses written a thousand years ago by Bhavka Devi or Verse by the great Indian philosopher Bhartrihari, the Tamil Sangam poets, Gita Govinda and of course the epic work on human sexual behaviour which was compiled between the second and third centuries, Kama Sutra. 

Interspersed with these great writings are the more contemporary works like the coming of sexual age story excerpted from Junglee Girl by Ginu Kamani,an excerpt from The Cuckold by  Kiran Nagarkar, Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaaf (what else?) and of course works by the queen of modern erotica, Kamla Das. The sources are many, varied, rich and sometimes surprising, which creates a finely layered anthology. 

In her foreword, Narayanan talks about the erotic life of Indians and the argument between the literary romantics (who embrace and celebrate eroticism) and the religious traditionalists (who caution against it, warning that it has the potential for chaos) that continues to prevail. She propagates the “Kama Life” and suggests that that “we should consider resurrecting him daily, because it is pleasure that makes life worth living”. 

The pro-erotic writers argue that eroticism is fundamental to nature. However, there is a third dimension to sexuality as well — the spiritual component to amour which was projected in the Upanishadas and developed by the Bhakti, Hatha Yoga and Tantra poets and authors. 

The book has been sectioned into 12 parts. The first chapter is Why Bother with Sex? which starts with the verse from Brihadaranyaka Upnishad:

You are what you deep, 

driving desire is

As your desire is, so is 

your will

As your will is, so is your deed

As your deed is, so is your 

destiny...

In the subsequent chapters, Narayanan goes on to categorise the different stages and emotions of love that play out the whole gamut of the amorous and erotic experience — The art of Seduction; Ennui in Marriage; Rapture and Longing; First Time; Anger, Punishment and Make Up; Men’s wish to be Women; Suspicion and Confusion etc.  Narayanan eschews a set chronological order but assembles the works thematically. She scatters verses amidst the prose pieces. Thus the reading experience is both nonlinear and unexpected.

The texts are drawn from literatures of various states, times and languages — from Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujrati, Kannada and even Italian. The translators are a formidable brigade — AK Ramanujan, Arshia Sattar, Alex Comfort, Eknath Easwaran, Harish Trivedi, Mani Rao, Moussaieff Masson- just to name a few.

Aptly, the book is named, Parrots of Desire — the green parrot being the ride of Kamadev, the handsome, young God of love and desire.