by Seema Anand
(A paan shop in the Indian town of Aurangabad claims to have a paan that can turn any man into a superlative lover—and unlike Viagra it has an effect that can last up to several days! The paan costs the equivalent of sixty pounds, a cost that the proprietor justifies by the extraordinarily expensive and unusual ingredients he claims it contains. But the magic touch is a secret ingredient which only he knows—and his customers swear by it. They say it is especially bought by men for their wedding days. I wonder if the secret ingredient is quince.)
There were even paans made with crushed gems. According to one source, sapphires would be crushed and served in paan. Sapphires are associated with the capricious and often malevolent demigod Shani and so they have to be worn with enormous care, but if they suit you then you could have the neelamani paan (made with crushed sapphires). It would remove all negative sexual energies.
The vocabulary of the betel leaf was as extensive as it was complex.
For example, the end-of-foreplay paan was traditionally offered by the woman—it was her decision as to when foreplay should finish and sex could begin. It was a very overt act—she would step back flushed and sweating with passion, breathless with desire, allowing her lover to see her in all her arousal, coy and inviting, confident that she was in control and she would make the paan. Occasionally, however, the man could also take the lead in offering paan to bring foreplay to a close. The new lover (or new wife) may be very shy and lack the confidence to stop and make the paan. If she wasn’t quite confident, the man was advised to make the paan and place it on her lap—it would save her the embarrassment of making it, all she had to do was to pick it up and offer it to him.
An even more delicate permutation of this custom was where, taking into account her inexperience and hesitation, the lover took a bite of the paan and offered the rest to her so she could get used to the idea of feeling his lips on hers. If she took his paan it meant she was ready accept his kisses.
It was like writing a love letter. Depending on what you put inside the paan, how you fragranced it, how you tied it, even the lac with which you sealed the package carrying the paan—everything had its own special meaning. Each shape or filling or even the way it was delivered could create any mood that the lover may have wished for, from romance to rejection to coquetry to outright invitation.
With one type of paan you could tell your beloved that you wanted to worship at her feet forever, with another you could tell your lover that you didn’t like him and he shouldn’t call again, yet another could mean you wanted sex with no strings attached, while a slightly different one could be to beg for just one little kiss to tide you over while you waited patiently for something more!
Both men and women practised the giving and taking of paan.
For sexual purposes, it was generally given with the left hand. The beloved in the act of giving paan to end foreplay is known as ‘priyatama vamhast’ or ‘she who offers paan with the left hand’ because sex was an activity for the left hand. Eating and praying was done with the right hand, sex and all things sexual were performed with the left hand.
My Advice
With its subtle and evocative vocabulary, paan has been the language of lovers for over 2,000 years. Artists and poets have used it to depict love and lovemaking—now it’s your turn. And the great news is that it can still be practised. It doesn’t need special circumstances, private spaces or acrobatic positions and yet it is guaranteed to add a touch of romance and spice to any relationship.
Let your imagination have a field day. If the Kama Sutra thought it was the ultimate art of seduction it is definitely worth trying.
Add spice to your love life—practise sending messages through paan. It can be a fun way to form a connection or start a flirtation. Innovate.
Get creative. There is a shop in southern India that sells fifty-one different types of paan. Imagine what you could do with them.
The next time you have guests over, serve paan—of different shapes and with different messages for your guests to choose from.
Look for paintings or poetry with paan analogies—use this as a conversation piece with your lover. Let this be a shared interest that leads to a closer bond.
Inexplicably, there is something supremely sexy about a woman who carries a small silver box or a silk pouch of supari. Not a packet of chewing gum or polo mints or a little foil packet—a beautiful silver box with good quality and unusual supari. Pull this out at social gatherings and offer some around. It attracts a lot of attention.
Try all of the above. Let sensuality into your blood stream.
Today in India we associate the elaborate paan customs with the Mughal court and the aristocratic and polite societies of Hyderabad and Lucknow.
But the tradition of paan existed in India centuries before the Mughals made an appearance. Not only that—but as we know from the Kama Sutra—it existed in all its luxurious sensuousness.
As we set off exploring the arts of seduction, let paan be the first stop.
Sex and Food
According to ancient wisdom a big, heavy meal before sex is not a good idea—all the energy of the body gets channelled into the digestive process and leaves none for sexual arousal. The body needs a great deal of steam to digest the meal as well as raise sexual energy and, unfortunately, it will automatically pick the digestion process—you don’t get to decide.
Food should be had after sex. The Kama Sutra recommends that after sex the man should offer the beloved a beautifully presented gourmet meal, with varied flavours to satisfy her taste buds. Before sex one should stick to light savoury snacks and a couple of drinks—literally two drinks because being drunk reduces the erection and is not conducive to great sex.
Sex needs energy, good sex needs a lot of energy, fabulous sex needs huge amounts of energy. Food and drink should help in the process, not distract from it.
In the time of the Kama Sutra the social norm was to eat during the mid-afternoon. Whether one was preparing for sex or not, eating later in the evening (our dinner time) was not generally recommended.
Ideally, if the couple had a date for sex (and both partners were aware of it), the man would feed the beloved a few light snacks before they made love. Something warm—because it takes less energy to digest. Not fatty meat—this gives sweat and sexual fluids an unpleasant odour during sex. Nuts were often included—the good fatty acids in nuts give extra blood flow to the genitals and raise the sexual energy properly.
After sex was the time to spoil her with every kind of delicacy to please her taste buds. The aprés sex meal was to include mutton soup (as I’ve mentioned, courtesans had to be fed mutton soup and chicken broth to recoup their energies after an exhausting night), kebabs, grilled food, vegetables, fragrant rice, walnuts, mangoes, candied oranges and other sweets.
And, the Kama Sutra says, it was not just what you offered her to eat but how you offered it. The lover was to pick up each item of food, bite into it first and then offer it to her, telling her ‘this one is sweet, this one is salty’. He must offer her a variety of juices and sherbets, holding the cup to her lips with his hands.
If, however, food before sex was unavoidable—you had invited her to a party and heavy food and drink was consumed—then a couple of hours gap and some physical activity was necessary. The Kama Sutra stipulates that after dinner, guests should be entertained with cock and quail fights, singing games (antakshri etc.) and other activities. Digestives and mouth fresheners such as paan should also be offered. All this would give the digestive process time to settle down and make the body ‘love’ ready again.
The passage of time and wishful thinking have developed a long list of the ‘right’ kind of foods—aphrodisiacs—to eat to become virile and sexy.
The Kama Sutra (and all the love texts of the ancient East) insists that the foods you eat make all the difference to your sexual prowess, not because they have magical properties but because they work with the organs in individual ways to release energy a
nd increase blood flow.
The best kind of aphrodisiac was simply right eating! Good sex needed a lot of energy. Eating right meant good digestion, good digestion meant good metabolism and good metabolism meant lots of energy—if your body was lacking in energy you were not going to be any good at sex! If you were going to flop into a breathless heap after a few minutes then all skills of seduction and all knowledge of the erotic arts were pointless.
One of the most popular aphrodisiacs was a mixture of scented water and honey because it was a great cure for constipation. Constipation causes genital odours and energy blockages—both were death to good sex.
Fish was also an excellent food for lovers. Not just oysters—almost any kind of fish. The ancients believed that fish expelled trapped wind and reduced bloating—getting rid of wind was the quickest way to unblock the channels of sexual energy. Fish also generated heat in the body which in turn made you more passionate. So strong was this belief in the efficacy of fish as an aphrodisiac that men of the British East India Company held that having sex with Bengali women (a fish-eating community) was the only way to beat the unbearable monsoon heat which was known to completely sap people of energy. According to an article that appeared in a London newspaper in the 1800s, the Company men (back in the time of Jahangir) had even applied to the Mughal emperor for permission to have sex with Bengali women during the monsoons—for health reasons.
The zinc in almonds boosts the male sex hormones and the ancients believed that their fragrance was a turn-on for women. Romans used almond confetti during weddings (like many Indian communities throw rice) and, according to the Bible, Samson wooed Delilah with almond branches.
Alcohol was great but in moderation. A couple of glasses not only lowered inhibitions and relaxed you but added to the beauty of the woman as well—‘flushed cheeks’, ‘red eyes’, ‘wine breath’ were high compliments. Too much wine however caused people to perspire and flop all over their lovers. Vatsyayan begins by saying that ‘abstinence is a very special virtue’ (amadyapa iti nagrakagunah) but moderation was a good compromise. Generally the alcohol referred to in the Kama Sutra was a form of red wine—one, because it was a warm drink and, second, because red was the colour of passion and anything red was considered an aphrodisiac. It was perfumed with lotus flowers or new mango leaves—to counter the effects of bad breath.
Paan was a very popular aphrodisiac. It served a variety of purposes. It freshened the breath, it beautified the mouth (staining the lips red) and the different ingredients were supposed to have their own particular effect on the senses. Besides which, the love vocabulary associated with the giving and taking of paan made it even more desirable.
Sugarcane juice and sali rice come highly recommended. Legend has it that when the Sun god was drinking his share of the Amrit (the nectar of immortality) a few drops fell to the ground and these became sugarcane juice and sali rice. Sugarcane derived its aphrodisiac reputation from the season (it’s hot) and the taste (sweet foods were associated with sweetening the senses). Sali rice comes in different varieties—one has a lotus fragrance, one is red and there is even a variety that looks like the male organ and was considered a great aphrodisiac (the Indian tradition of throwing rice at newly-weds comes from sali rice). Whatever their reality both things are great because for some reason they help mellow the senses.
Virgil wrote that rocket leaf (arugula) salad was good for the libido because ‘it excites the sexual desire of drowsy people’.
Onions, garlic and meat increase the heat in the blood. In ancient India widows and women whose husbands were travelling were not permitted to eat any of these foods for fear of arousing passion.
Condiments like turmeric, red chillies, black pepper etc. were considered very effective stimulants because they cleared the blood stream and made digestion easier.
The Chinese believed that foods that are good for the kidneys are the best aphrodisiacs because the kidney is the organ that balances the energy of the genitals. According to Chinese medicine, the kidneys like foods that have deep colours and are naturally salty. They suggest a diet of fish (sea fish are better than river fish), black mushrooms, black beans, blueberries, eggs (especially quail’s eggs), red meat (not chicken), bone marrow, walnuts and tofu.
My Advice
It’s time to understand what makes you tick.
We all like the idea of using something to help us—it makes us feel more secure. It’s not a bad thing so long as you understand that aphrodisiacs are not magic potions. At best, certain foods will enhance your performance a little, they won’t change you into a gifted and powerful lover. Even Viagra will simply give you a long-lasting erection, not the physical energy to sustain sexual activity—an unending hard-on is not the same as being able to do something with it.
Food has all sorts of properties—some real, some imagined. Casanova used to eat celery before a night of seduction—he believed it was an aphrodisiac and that was enough to make it one.
Somewhere in the world and at some point in time every food has probably been an aphrodisiac. The ancients believed that food that resembled the genitals had the properties of genitals—mangoes, figs, etc. because they look like breasts; avocados, shellfish, etc. that resemble the vagina; gourds, cucumbers, bananas because they are shaped like the penis.
Foods that had to be ‘licked’ were the voyeur’s aphrodisiac—particularly the extra juicy fruits, like mangoes and watermelon.
Anything red was an aphrodisiac because red is the colour of passion—strawberries, watermelon, beetroot. Even rubies were powdered and mixed with honey or goat’s milk and were believed to have great aphrodisiac properties on the proviso that they had to be secretly administered, that is, without the knowledge of the person consuming the food.
Rhino horn had its reputation simply because of its shape which resembles an erect phallus. However there is nothing even remotely aphrodisiac about it. It is made up entirely of keratin and eating it is no different than biting your own nails.
Scientifically speaking, none of these were of any real use. They were what we believed them to be and that’s what worked for us.
The best sex comes with a healthy body and an energized mind and food only adds to this fantastic experience.
The Kama Sutra says that when feeding your lover the presentation and the variety is extremely important. Today you have it all—beautifully presented dishes, fabulously written menus, the restaurant’s decor, the fragrance, their choice of music—they’re all potential aphrodisiacs. You have so much to choose from—don’t limit yourself to old ideas of magic potions.
A healthy diet will open up the channels of your sexual energy and regular exercise will give you the stamina to stay with it longer.
Don’t have a heavy meal before sex—it doesn’t lead to good sex. If you have had too much to eat or drink the sex will just not match up to the expectations of the evening.
Too much alcohol slows down the sexual energy and makes the erection more difficult to sustain.
There is no such thing as the perfect aphrodisiac—the perfect aphrodisiac changes with age. At every stage your needs are different and so is the thing that will fulfil those needs.
As you get older you feel you are slowing down, you can’t do the things you could before and need something to boost your drive as well as your sexual prowess. The thing to remember is that change is not a bad thing, slower doesn’t mean that your sexual drive is diminished and older doesn’t mean you have lost it altogether. It’s different—and with that so is the way that you respond to pleasure.
Savour your food and your sex at each stage. It’s a new experience.
If I were to choose one effective aphrodisiac I would pick foods that contain zinc, such as apples, asparagus and pumpkin seeds. And as a placebo aphrodisiac, I would pick paan—I think it would be very exciting to be seduced by paan.
Therapeutic Sex
The premise is simple. Sexual energy is the most powerful form of energy
that the body can produce but generally it all just dissipates with the orgasm. Imagine, however, if you could use this energy for your own benefit.
During sex all the metabolic processes of the entire body are activated, every single organ goes through some form of change. There is a change in respiration, in the heartbeat, the circulation, the brain waves, and every gland and organ starts to secrete some or the other hormone.
Everything metabolizes during sex to produce an energy so powerful that it can create life.
Just like if you were to take a bottle and fill it with water and make the water flow in whichever direction you turned the bottle, similarly, Ayurveda believes that you can use different sexual positions to make sexual energy flow in different ways and heal yourself. With specific positions you can focus the flow of the energy to reach certain points, to heal and strengthen specific parts of the body.
The underlying principle of therapeutic sex, as it’s described in the ancient erotic texts, was control. The positions had to be held for long periods of time. Movements, breath, even the time of day had to be very carefully regulated; ejaculation was to be stringently controlled. Therapeutic sex was not about orgasm or even pleasure, it was about harnessing, holding and directing sexual energy. And according to the texts, this energy could heal everything from low haemoglobin to gastric wind and bloating to back pain.
Here are a few positions to start practising.
The first thing to master is the rhythm of thrusting.
Everything from the length, the pleasure and the effectiveness of the sexual act depends on the artistry of the thrusts. How the man thrusts will define which erotic nerves are stimulated inside the vulva which in turn will decide what kind of energy will arise and how it will travel. It also increases the man’s staying power—the right kind of thrusting can help him control ejaculation and increase the variety of what he can do in bed.