Kama

by Gurcharan Das

  —Kamasutra V.8.1

  Several years had passed and much had happened. After abandoning me, Isha had been on and off with Anand. I had suffered terribly during this period but after months of relentless pain, I seemed somehow to get over her. I knew I was succeeding because I had kept my cool when I ran into her at the Bombay Gymkhana one evening. Earlier, I would have been nervous and tongue-tied; she too would have avoided me. But now, looking distraught, she drew me towards a quiet corner.

  ‘He is tired of me, Amar!’ she announced.

  She looked utterly unlike the woman I remembered. I had not seen her in more than a year. Both morally and physically, she had changed for the worse. I discovered that her relationship with Anand was indeed in trouble. ‘He doesn’t love me any more . . . he finds me a burden,’ she confessed bitterly. ‘Yesterday, I went to see him. I pleaded with him. I offered myself to him. But he was cold and turned me away.’ A flush of shame spread over her. She sat for a long time unable to go on. ‘He just sat calmly, his smug face looking down at me.’ A feeling of anger came over her, and she clenched her fist, a gesture so coarse, so unfeminine, I thought.

  She had grown stouter, I thought. When she spoke of Anand a spiteful expression distorted her face. I looked at her as I might at a faded flower in which it was difficult to trace the beauty that had once made me pick it up. ‘I know, but I can’t help it, Amar,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine what torture it is to be always waiting for him. I may be jealous of his affairs but I can put up with them. I don’t want him to abandon me.’

  The way you abandoned me, I thought. Changing the subject, I asked Isha about her husband.

  ‘My husband? He doesn’t torment himself. He comes and goes but he’s at the ashram more and more. I know him—he’s steeped in falsehood, through and through. If he had any feeling, could he possibly live with me as he does? He understands nothing, feels nothing. Could a man with any feelings live in the same house with his guilty wife?’

  Isha wanted to talk only about Anand and she promptly returned to him. She complained that he had no sense of loyalty.

  ‘You were the one who used to say that there is no loyalty in love.’

  She gave a look that made me regret what I had said. I sat listening to her for a long time. Consternation was written on her face. She interrupted herself now and then with the same interjection: ‘He’s crazy. He’s crazy.’ She worried that Anand saw her out of duty alone, and not out of love. ‘As though he were meeting his mother,’ she said bitterly, ‘as though respect could replace and fill the empty space left behind by love.’ She became more and more miserable, and my attempts to appease her failed.

  When she had finished, she hung her head and I saw a tear trickle down her left cheek.

  ‘I have lost him for good.’

  She turned away from me and wept silently, leaning her face against the back of the chair. Her face, which had been utterly beautiful a year ago, was now twisted with profound grief. She did not care to hide her pain but there was nothing I could do. I didn’t know what vain, conflicting hopes she had cherished. She had made it clear that she would have been content to let him have his other women as long as he came back to her eventually, or at least remained a part of her world.

  ‘If I don’t stop crying, my eyes will be terrible and I am going out to dinner tonight.’ She took a mirror out of her bag and looked at herself anxiously. ‘I must go and wash my face with cold water, yes, that’s what I must do,’ she said. She looked at me reflectively. The old mocking light in her eyes had faded, but a different sort of smile, a consciousness of something that I didn’t know had spread over her face like a gentle sadness. She left me as suddenly as she had arrived.

  ~

  I felt that each of the three persons who ruled my emotions expected something different from kama. For Anand, it was the carnal pleasure he took in being in his beloved’s arms. Isha found in love the vain satisfaction of being adored. Avanti claimed that it was the joy of bringing happiness to the person she loved (although she hedged it, saying that she didn’t know if she had the altruism to pull it off). Anand sought physical gratification; Isha’s motive was self-love and she needed a lover to feed her vanity; Avanti wished the good of the ‘other’, transcending Anand’s natural appetites and Isha’s social and psychological needs.

  I formed these stereotypes in my mind at a time in my life when I was uncertain that these pigeonholes would hold in the future. Life has a logic of its own and things don’t work out the way we expect them to; people have a way of surprising us. I was confused—I did not know what I wanted out of love. It was perhaps all of these. I couldn’t place my own motivations neatly in one of these compartments. I felt I wanted something else from love. Ever since I had lost Isha, life had been flat and insipid. Her love had brought a certain excitement in my life, and there was now a ‘hole in my soul’, as the ballad goes. After losing her, I had become aware of an ineffable void and longing that love had filled when I had been with her. And this emotion didn’t seem to fit into any of the mental compartments

  Meanwhile, I remained good friends with Avanti. She had grown more attractive and confident. She began to wear nice clothes and her physical lure surged as well. Best of all, she had a lightness of life, like yeast to bread which lightens the dough as it rises. In the depth of her being, she seemed to be aware that it was only a role that she was playing, and this prevented her from taking herself or her life too seriously. But our relationship remained firmly at the level of friendship. It was deep and profound—we would have done anything for each other. I was still vulnerable when it came to Isha, but anything could have happened between Avanti and me. However, both of us showed restraint and dared not cross the line. Avanti had discovered a guru and an ashram at Igatpuri, about three hours away from Bombay. She would sometimes hop on to a train and spend the weekend at his retreat. I tried to draw her out about the guru and his teachings but she was reluctant to talk about it. I sensed that she was herself unsure and I did not press.

  In comparison to a certain emptiness at the centre of Anand’s life, Avanti’s had a core of fullness. If desire is a lack of something, as Plato suggests—an urge to fill a void, an urge to completion—then the accompanying fantasy is of an ideal or an idealized object. To the extent that there is a lack of realism, possession can lead to disillusion; so, Anand’s search continued. Avanti had some inner resources; at least, she had the capacity to judge others realistically; so, she didn’t need to fill an inner void with excited fantasy.

  I wondered if there is also a clue in the word ‘restraint’, which has an old-fashioned ring about it these days. It might explain my relationship with Avanti and point to an answer to my nagging question about what lovers wanted. In pursuit of this clue, I found something in Vatsyayana’s sage advice in the Kamasutra. He says, ‘A woman desires any attractive man she sees the same way a man desires an attractive woman. But after some consideration, the matter goes no further.’ Vatsyayana suggests that to be civilized one must exercise a certain amount of discrimination and restraint. He thinks sexuality is a matter of culture and art, and so, too important to be left to nature. And for this restraint, human beings may have paid a price as Freud pointed out in Civilization and Its Discontents. Of this, more later.

  The natural tendency of human beings is to pursue sensual pleasure, but the civilizing process restrains them from pouncing upon each other like animals. Does one have to translate every desire into instant pleasure each time? Is there not pleasure in desiring itself? It may be a good thing to have a rich ‘private life’ of secret desires and not translate them into the physical world of one’s ‘public life’ in order to preserve a degree of sanity. This is why Anna and Sergei decide that their love affair must remain a secret in Chekhov’s intriguing story, ‘Lady with a Lapdog’.

  Human desire, as I have pointed out, seems to begin as sensual excitement, and then travels from our senses to our imagination, whereupon it creates
a fantasy, which translates the physical arousal into a series of mental images. It also turns the sensual excitement into attraction for a specific person. While a man fantasizes about the woman he desires, he comes to realize that she too is a desiring subject and his pleasure depends on his ability to communicate his fantasy to her. The same probably applies to a woman, and in this way, fantasies give rise to the specifically human art of seduction. Society, however, exploits this human capability in order to create social conventions, such as marriage and family, for the purposes of social harmony. From the viewpoint of nature, however, fantasies are about enticing humans to accomplish ‘freely’ what animals do instinctively.

  Society has found many ways to channel the ‘sense of freedom’ created by our imagination. Around the world, people have been made to believe that the pleasures of the flesh are sinful unless consummated within marriage. The birth of romantic or passionate love, however, led to an irrational overestimation of the desired person. Love’s power was strangely addictive and contagious. In India, lovers were conditioned through stories of fidelity and sacrifice. Some lovers in the West, under the weight of Christian teaching, began to believe that their desires needed no carnal outlet. The danger for others lay in the delay between the emergence of the fantasy and the sexual act; in their frustration, they began to idealize each other. When they finally married, their hope for eternal bliss turned into disappointment and even repugnance. These tensions between public morals and private desires are some of the discontents of civilization.

  Women, in particular, have been the prime targets of this ‘civilizing mission’. Societies have established moral systems that promote the ‘feminine’ values of modesty, constancy and fidelity. Women are taught to be modest and faithful, and to take pride in resisting their desires. While a ‘respectable’ woman is expected to remain modest at all times, once married, she has to embrace a second virtue called ‘constancy.’ In India, dharma texts and stories in the epics and Puranas created a social code that promoted an ideal of female virtue, stri-dharma, which conditioned women to accept a subordinate place in a patriarchal society. In recent years, fortunately, some of these stifling impositions that injured the human temperament have loosened around the world.

  ~

  Over the next few weeks I noticed that the enthusiasm of Bombay’s society for Isha waned quickly when it discovered that Anand had dropped her.

  ‘People are beginning to throw stones at me,’ she said.

  She had dropped by at my flat unannounced. She had just been to see Neena and had found her friend’s manner very different.

  ‘You know how fond I am of you,’ Neena had told her. ‘I am always ready to do anything for you, but I have to be candid. We had hoped that Anand would make an honest woman out of you and marry you. But this is not going to happen, that’s what I am hearing. Please don’t think I am criticizing you. Not at all! In your place I might have done the same. But I have daughters growing up, and I must mix in society, if not for my sake, at least for my husband’s.’

  Hearing Isha recount this conversation, I realized the fragile nature of friendships in the upper echelon of Bombay’s society. She spoke bitterly about what she had to expect from her friends. She reminded me that only a few months ago, they were applauding her for her courage, for defying the old rules of society, but as soon as they learnt that there was going to be no marriage, they began to abandon her like rats on a sinking ship.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked me abruptly. ‘Do you think any the worse of me?’

  ‘Would you care?’

  ‘I want you to think well of me. So, tell me honestly.’

  ‘Well, I loved you, and you know that. So, I can’t be very objective.’

  ‘Tell me honestly, damn it!’

  Honesty needed the sort of bravery that I did not possess. If I were to be honest, I would have called her ‘self-centred’. I would have reminded her that not once did she express remorse for the pain she had brought me. Not once did she acknowledge our relationship in public. But I didn’t say any of those things. I discovered to my relief that I was free of her. She no longer had that old hypnotic hold over me. So, I gave a very different reply.

  ‘Well, you are beautiful, but you know that already. You have grace and charm. Obviously, you were brought up with good taste, especially in art. But I think your defining quality is determination; you won’t let anyone come in the way of ruthlessly going after what you want.’

  ‘Ruthless?’

  ‘Of course, I was on the wrong side, and so I got hurt.’

  ‘What else?’ she asked with a faint smile.

  ‘You lack tenderness.’

  The smile died on her lips and she gave me a glance that was lacking completely in subtlety, and before she could collect herself to reply, the phone rang. I went to answer it in the other room.

  It was Avanti. I told her that I couldn’t speak and would call her back.

  ‘I hear Isha has come back to you?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Everyone in Bombay is talking about it.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I’ll tell you when we meet.’

  ‘You better.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘I mean I shouldn’t have to hear of these things from others.’

  I sensed a hint of jealousy there and I felt flattered. I returned to Isha, who continued to unburden herself, until she suddenly remembered that she had tickets for the opening night of a much-awaited new play by a young Indian writer.

  ‘Come with me? I don’t want to go alone,’ she said.

  ‘Are you really going to the theatre?’

  ‘Why do you ask with such alarm? Why shouldn’t I go?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I frowned.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Isha, you are setting yourself up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ’Don’t you know . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t care!’ she shrieked. ‘Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If I had to do it all over again, I would. For me, there is one thing that matters. I love him. I don’t care about people.’ There was a strange glitter in her eyes.

  And so, we went to the play. I listened with one ear while my eyes roamed around in the dark trying to spot anyone who might be gazing at us. I saw the bald head of Raj Desai. He was sitting with Sheila and he suddenly blinked angrily at something the actor uttered. I also noticed the elegant and very proper Ruchi Saigal sitting nearby with her husband—too near for comfort. I had not seen them for months and worried about her sharp tongue. She had met Isha at my party two years ago and had been cool towards her ever since. My eyes returned to rest on Isha, who sat with her head proudly erect. Her eyes were smiling at the dialogue on the stage.

  Soon, it was intermission. As the lights came on, Isha suggested we go down for coffee. I didn’t want her to run into people, so I discouraged her. But I slipped out to go to the toilet. When I returned, Isha was standing, looking anxiously about her with her brilliant eyes. A few feet away, Ruchi Saigal was also standing, her back towards Isha, speaking excitedly to her husband, who kept glancing at Isha. Her face was pale and angry. Her stout and balding husband was trying to pacify his wife while glancing apologetically at Isha.

  ‘I think she’s mean and hateful.’

  ‘Who?’ I whispered.

  Isha pointed to Mrs Saigal with her eyes. ‘She had no right to behave as she did!’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, I was sitting quietly waiting for you. And suddenly, she screams.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘There isn’t a more spiteful creature than that woman!’

  ‘But what has she done?’ I asked.

  ‘She insulted me. Her husband began talking to me from across the aisle, and she shrieked at him. She made such a scene, using offensive words in a loud voice and everyone turned around. I didn’t know where to look.’

  ‘Oh, Isha!’ I said.r />
  ‘It’s all my fault, all my fault!’ she cried, tears streaming and despair and anger seething in her voice.

  ‘I told you not to come here. I knew it would be unpleasant . . .’

  ‘Unpleasant!’ she cried. ‘It was awful! As long as I live, I shall never forget it. She called it a disgrace to sit beside me.’

  ‘A silly woman’s chatter,’ I said. ‘But why risk it, why provoke . . . ?’

  ‘I want to go home. Please, let’s go.‘

  ~

  The news of the incident at the theatre spread quickly. Kamini Masi was curious to know what had happened. I was dining at their flat a few days later, along with an old psychologist friend of theirs. But it wasn’t idle curiosity on her part—both Ramu Mama and Kamini Masi were genuinely protective of me ever since Isha had gone out of my life. She didn’t want me to get hurt again.

  ‘Isha is a narcissist!’ said the psychologist.

  I looked at him, puzzled. He had met Isha through her husband some years ago. She wasn’t a patient and so he felt free to offer an opinion. I was curious to understand what motivated Isha.

  ‘What matters to her is not to love but to be loved,’ he explained. ‘To love means to become vulnerable and this requires one to lower one’s self-regard.’ Freud believed that romantic love was an outgrowth of our primary state of narcissism, or ‘self-love’, as infants. As we grow up we learn to move beyond self-love and direct our desires towards another. To be in love is to expose oneself to the beloved. ‘One trades a certain amount of narcissism in order to love another,’ he added. Thus, love has a function in helping us grow up. We must begin to love in order that we don’t fall ill. Some, like Isha, never learn to redirect the narcissism and they are perpetually discontented in their love lives. Freud assumed that an individual had a finite amount of libido to direct and the less one directed it outward, the more it was directed inward. This was Isha’s problem.

  Isha’s misery was part of another old story. The pursuit of love in defiance of society’s rules almost always seems to end badly. No one has recounted this better than Leo Tolstoy in his great novel Anna Karenina. When I first picked it up, I thought it was a love story but soon realized that it was about the tragic consequences of illicit love. Tolstoy, in fact, warns us about the dangers of kama in one of the great opening lines in literature: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ These lines baffled me for a long time until I connected them to Isha. Like Isha’s marriage, Anna’s was a loveless one. Anna was unhappy with her husband, Karenin, who was mostly concerned about his social position. She felt their marriage was all show and she was vulnerable when she met Vronsky at the railway station. She then risked everything, ran away with him, and brought ruin on herself and her family. In the end, she threw herself under a rushing train.