A more serious challenge to kama optimists is posed by the ubiquity of pornography, especially after the advent of the Internet. Personally, I find porn has few redeeming features—it is brutish, exploitative, weakening, and diminishes the time one needs for idleness and boredom, which are necessary for a normal, healthy life and are often the breeding grounds for creative work. There are periodic calls to ban porn but these attempts generally fail because the state has a duty to protect me from others, not from myself. Constitutional democracies repose trust in adults, giving them the freedom to pursue their private lives as long as they do not harm others. A person who supports porn would argue in court: ‘Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from doing something in solitude within the four walls of my room?’ In a free, liberal society, we are trained to say, ‘I do not watch porn but I do not object to your watching it.’ We are taught to respect those who differ from us and give them breathing space. This obviously does not apply to child pornography, which should be banned.
Another puzzle about kama is that love tends to embellish what is purely physical desire or lust, thereby entailing a degree of deception. It is not deliberate lying, according to Shakespeare, but the work of the imagination and madness:
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
Dorothy Parker, the witty American poet, disagrees with Shakespeare, and suggests that lovers engage in a deliberate strategy of deceit.
By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Unlike Parker, Shakespeare is kinder to lovers. He believes that lovers are like children—impetuous, incapable of self-restraint and addicted to make-believe. When we are in love, the imagination takes over and we tend to see what we want to see—not what the other person is but what we desire the other person to be. Besides, don’t we all want to appear better, more attractive, than we are? Parker’s point is that given a choice between lust and the illusions of love, the sensible, rational and honest answer is straightforward lust. Shakespeare would retort that love is not just an illusion: we are changed by love—‘for the moment at least we are what we imagine ourselves to be’. It makes me wonder: how much of my love for Isha and Amaya was purely lust?
There is another paradox of kama: when two people love, they become one and remain two at the same time. In the best of all possible worlds, love should not be limited to one person. It is not about just giving each other freedom but allowing the other to love others. If my love for one individual distances me from others, it alienates me from humanity. When I love a person, I am not passive but active—I love the humanity in that person. My love makes me happier, more alive, and oddly enough, more independent. It should make me capable of loving other persons. Thus, true love should never be exclusive. When we first considered marriage, it was Avanti, ironically, who worried that constant intimacy might become oppressive but she didn’t realize that love and marriage are possessive. Ideally, love should not be territorial and sex should be a healthy, physical and pleasurable experience, a bit like a game of squash or badminton. And one should be able to enjoy playing it with multiple partners. Alas, this utopian ideal is doomed, for it goes against possessiveness, one of the human flaws that goes back to the evolution of our species.
Kama offers another dilemma: love does not just happen to you; it is a creation and achievement. And yet, it is not an act of will. You cannot simply wake up one morning and state, ‘Today, I’m going to fall in love.’ ‘Good looks’ are often a starting point for ‘love at first sight’, but if you are looking for enduring love, then other qualities matter—kindness, sympathy, understanding, vulnerability. Even if you patiently cultivate some of these benign virtues, love is a matter of luck. The irony is that we spend all our time looking for the right person when all we should be looking for are the right qualities. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes evokes with great splendour our longing to find the right person and a sense of fulfilment when he or she is found; but he doesn’t explain what we should expect from the other person or what will make us complete and self-sufficient.
Just as Nietzsche felt regret that the kama principle had been suppressed in the modern West, I feel the same sense of loss in contemporary India. The excessive emphasis on dharma and moksha have devalued kama. As a nation, we have not yet recovered from the ascetic influence of Mahatma Gandhi, who practised celibacy as a goal of life during the struggle for independence. Our urban middle-classes have still not fully shed Victorian ‘middle class morality’ despite the gradual sexual liberation since the 1990s. India needs to repossess the creative force of kama and restore the classical balance of the ancient Indian purusharthas. Only thus will harmony be restored to a chaotic nation in transition between tradition and modernity.
Yet, I do feel sympathy for a kama pessimist like my father. He could never know the appeal of the Kamasutra as a metaphor, let alone appreciate the vision of Raj Desai’s for redeploying the ancient erotic text to liberate the young Indian mind. He belonged to the puritanical, post-Independence generation that was motivated by the spirit of nation building. In his mind, idleness was evil (‘aaram haram hai’) and the pursuit of pleasure required both time and resources, and these could be better utilized for the critical project of nation building.
The twentieth century has been sympathetic to kama across the world. Prior to the sexual revolution, whom one loved or desired could result in, brutal punishment by the state. There existed terrible laws against premarital sex, adultery and ‘miscegenation’ in the West, which brought years in jail, mental asylums, chemical castration, and of course, angry moralizing. Premodern India, in contrast, was more relaxed. Colonialism replaced the traditional Indian ‘benign neglect’ of intimate relations by the Victorian paranoia about sexuality. Repressive laws came into being. For example, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was enacted which criminalized same-sex relations, prostitution, and other ‘deviances’.
A broader, more sensitive critique of contemporary Indian attitudes comes from Indian feminism. I find myself at one with feminists because expressions of a sexualized culture are all too often dehumanizing, especially to women. Activists among them have achieved a great deal in India, changing the laws related to dowry, rape, the harassment of women; they have created greater awareness of the subliminal and insidious influence of patriarchy that objectifies women. A group of radical feminists, however, go further and equate kama and erotic pleasure with exploitation. They will not be happy with this book, alas, because they believe that a focus on pleasure ignores the patriarchal structure in which women have to act. In their standard narrative, men are simply oppressors. But there is a more liberal group of feminists who believe that to speak only of sexual violence and oppression is inadequate, for it ignores women’s experience of sexual pleasure. The proper balance comes from maximizing women’s agency and choice, thus ensuring an egalitarian relationship between fully consenting, equal partners. This is easier said than done, for the structures of patriarchal power are hidden and they inevitably place women in an unequal, disempowered position.
I return in the end to the gaze of the tranquil face from Mathura which has helped me time and again to come to terms with the riddle of kama. Her civilized composure, as I said before, reflects the classical values of harmony, restraint and balance, which were the foundations of the self-assurance of the classical age of the Guptas. The key word is balance, which underlies the civilizational equipoise of the philosophy of the purusharthas—a good life demands a balance between the plural goals of human life. It is unwise to spend one’s entire life pursuing a single high ideal. The gaze on the scul
pture from Mathura speaks to me of this balance in which all the four goals are in equilibrium: the life-affirming Dionysian principle of kama; the practical imperative of artha—making a living and bringing up a family; the ultimate aspiration of moksha for the higher meaning of life; while ensuring that the pursuit of all three is under the self-restraint of an ethical dharma.
Our ideal of a contemporary, flourishing life should reflect this sensible plurality of goals: a satisfying job to live comfortably and raise a family (artha); the pleasure of loving the person one lives with (kama); a clear conscience from knowing that one is not deceiving or hurting another (dharma); the intent to give meaning to life either through religion or atheistically (moksha). This classical balance of plural objectives has eroded over time in favour of monolithic goals. In feudal society, the highest virtue was conquest and courage in battle (as Arjuna and Karna exemplified in the Mahabharata). In modern, industrial society, commercial success and professional careerism supplant the feudal goal. All along, there has always been a minority—priests, ascetics and renouncers—seeking a singular spiritual goal. The problem with these singular conceptions of the good life, invariably, is that they devalue the ordinary life of the common man—sowing, ploughing, raising children, cooking and cleaning, chopping wood and fetching water. The monolithic goals exclude the majority of humanity. In recent times, concepts of democracy, the welfare state and female emancipation have given access to all four goals to the majority.
~
I began my memoir with the word smara, and it seems appropriate to end with it. Smara is memory. Kama, the god of love, is sometimes also called Smara, because he evokes desire through memory. These two Sanskrit words are not synonymous, however: kama refers to all kinds of desires, whereas smara designates only amorous desire, both in the Vedic and the classical texts. Our experiences leave impressions on our minds; sometimes these impressions are awakened and we experience them as memory; memory arouses smara. Like Proust, Abhinavagupta, the tenth-century philosopher, believed that memory is not simply remembering past impressions but entails an insight into the past by entering into an imagined world of beauty.
Smara is derived from its verbal root smar, ‘to remember’, and it evokes the remembrance of things desired, especially love. The charming love story of Nala and Damayanti, which first appears in the ancient Mahabharata, was transformed in the twelfth century into a powerful romantic poem by Sriharsha, titled ‘Naishadhiya-charita’. In it, Damayanti is suffering profoundly from the pain of separation from her beloved Nala. She blames Smara, the god of love, who has become a part of her own heart. When Nala finally turns up in the flesh, she is thrilled but is also confused. She doesn’t know whether it is the god Smara or her own true human love who is standing before her.
‘Your friend is wondering which one is Smara, and which one is you,’ the poet tells Nala. He explains that Smara has become in her mind a reflection of the reality that is you. ‘How else could there be a resemblance between you and him, since Smara is bodiless?’ (Recall, the god Kama/Smara was burnt by Shiva and is now ananga, ‘bodiless’.) In order to reassure Damayanti, Nala says, ‘I am not Smara, I am your own true love,’ and to convince her, Nala evokes memories (smaranas) of the past they had shared—the tender secrets of their passion, their own special way of loving, the erotic words they had shared. Damayanti blushes but is secretly delighted. Each verse that Nala utters includes a form of the root word smar—‘remember when . . .’ or ‘you can’t have forgotten . . .’ In evoking memories of the past, he also mentions the related word samskara, which refers to the traces left behind in the memory that eventually contribute to the individual’s character and destiny.
The same enchanting story turns up in an exquisite version by the great Telugu poet Shrinatha in the fourteenth century, and it is worth listening to the conversation between Nala and Damayanti. Nala has arrived disguised as a messenger on behalf of the gods, who also happen to be in love with Damayanti and have sent Nala to plead on their behalf. Truly a cruel mission! Damayanti finds that she is immediately attracted to the messenger but is not in the least bit interested in his message. She commands him:
What country do you come from, and where are you going?
What syllables make up your name?
Nala evades her request and dutifully embarks upon his speech, praising the virtues of the love-stricken gods. Both the messenger and the recipient seem to recognize one another but play a complex game of manoeuvring in which there is room both for doubt and certainty. In frustration, Damayanti says:
There was a question.
There was an answer.
There’s no logical connection between them.
I asked you for your name and your lineage.
You’ve spoken at great length about
somebody else.
Damayanti continues insistently:
The gods may be superior,
but I’m interested in you and your stories.
Tell me: when you’re thirsty,
do you want water or butter?
Nala is finding it harder and harder to keep up the pretence:
I’ll tell you this much, lovely lady
Because you’re a royal princess,
deserving respect. I don’t want to be
unfriendly, so: I’m a prince,
an offshoot of the lunar line.
For a conversation face-to-face,
The two words ‘you and ‘I’
are more than adequate and pleasing
to the ear. Why ask for a name?
It appears to be a reasonable solution but wilful Damayanti feels cheated in this game of one-upmanship. She raises the stakes and threatens to end the meeting with the handsome stranger.
Do you call this being friendly?
You give your family but won’t give
your name . . . If you’re in the mood
to deceive us, Sir,
can’t we deceive you in turn?
If giving your name is against your rules,
do my rules allow me to go on talking
with you?
Should a princess chat at length with strangers?
Let’s return to Sriharsha’s version. Nala continues to extol the virtues of the gods as potential bridegrooms. Finally, Damayanti can’t take it any more. In despair, she employs her final strategy. She bursts into tears. Nala can’t bear to see her thus and he forgets the gods, his mission and reveals his true identity.
Why are you crying, my love,
staining your face with tears?
Look at me. I’m right here.
Turn those darting eyes
to your
Nala.
As I approach the end of my life, I take solace in the stories of young lovers like Nala and Damayanti. My own are now memories (smaranas) and yearnings. After great effort, I eventually arrived at a special kind of love with Avanti, and we seem to have found enduring happiness in the company and friendship of each other. I have also come to believe in the great merit of the classical balance between the four goals of life. Nevertheless, the burden of guilt and shame over Amaya and grief over Isha will never go away. I remain at heart a kama optimist, perhaps not as rash as the eleventh-century poet Bilhana, who fell in love with a high princess and was condemned to death. Before dying, smara comes to his rescue and he remembers his beloved’s beauty and he brings her alive with his smriti, ‘the capacity for remembrance’:
Even now,
I remember her eyes
restlessly closed after love,
her slender body limp
fine clothes and heavy hair loose—
I shall recall her in my next life
and even at the end of time.
Author’s Note
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader’s r
ecognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book’s truth.
—Marcel Proust
I am writing this book on the advice of Anandavardhana, the Sanskrit critic of the ninth century, who suggests in Dhvanyaloka that a good book ought to confine itself to one of the four goals of life. I reasoned that I had written a book on artha, ‘material well-being’ (this was India Unbound), and another one on dharma, ‘moral well-being’ (The Difficulty of Being Good). It was time to tackle the third goal, kama, ‘desire and pleasure’, something that has troubled me throughout my life. It thus completes a trilogy based on the ancient trivarga. A fourth goal, moksha, ‘spiritual well-being’, was added later in history, but it also appears to be clearly beyond my reach. In the book on dharma, I asked, ‘How should one live?’, and I wrestled with our day-to-day moral dilemmas. Here I examine, how do we cope with desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life?
India is a nation in transition from tradition to modernity and it is just as important to converse openly about desire and the emotional life as about economic prosperity and democracy. For too long, we have repressed emotions and lived with patriarchal stereotypes; this is not healthy for a society. This book is a product of a lifetime of observing people and I decided early on that the only way to capture the rich ideas surrounding desire is through the personal lives of individuals. It is by empathizing with the suffering of the protagonist of this book, Amar, and learning from his mistakes, as he comes of age, that we realize that there is another way to live. Hence, the book needed a story to connect the ideas.
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