Somewhere, behind closed doors in their solitary world
Somewhere under the sheets with an indifferent lover
Somewhere is the woman who will not be denied
So reads the cover of Sita’s Curse , a poignant novel about a middle class Gujarati housewife, Meera, who chooses to defy society’s norms and makes atypical sexual and relationship choices. According to its author Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, “We have a rich repository of erotic writing in India, but it had to take something like Fifty Shades of Grey for us to wake up to it. I found that exceptionally weird. What happened to the centuries in between?”
She isn’t completely wrong. Erotica is scarcely a new phenomenon in India. There is a deeply entrenched vein of sensuality running through the Indian literary and cultural history — the Kama Sutra , the temples of Khajuraho, the verses of poet-saint Andal, Jayadeva’s Geet Govinda are ample proof. Over time, middle class morality seeped into the system and desire for the sake of desire began to be seen as an illicit pleasure. Sensuality was equated to illogical hedonism and though isolated pockets did get seduced by the sexually explicit writing of authors like Kamala Das, Ismat Chugtai, Shasti Brata and Khushwant Singh as well as the odd anthology of short stories, the audience continued to be a niche one.
Until, of course, EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey hit the market three years ago. It wasn’t impressive — the story-line was scarcely original (Pauline Reage’s Story of O , Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Triology , Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs and Marquis de Sade’s Justine have used a similar theme before and a lot better I must add), the writing was pedestrian, the plot predictable, the characters clichéd and rather limited.
Yet the book sold over 100 million copies worldwide, was translated into 52 languages, it became the fastest selling paperback and talks of a film adaptation are underway. The massive response seems to indicate that this was the first time desire had been chronicled so audaciously.
But James is only a small part of a literary tradition that includes the verses of Sappho, the diaries of Anais Nin, novels such as Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and John Cleland’s Memoirs of Fanny Hill , Emmanuelle Arsan’s memoirs, the poetry of Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda and many more—timeless classics that delved deep into the various facets of human relationships including sexuality.
However, James managed to procure a far larger audience and went completely mainstream, garnering a huge response from women.
What made it so markedly different? Why did so many women choose to read this book?
“I liked the book because of the characters and how they complemented each other. I did find the sex content exciting but she could have used better language to describe it,” says Rekha Ram, a freelance writer.
Adds Nandita Aggarwal of Hachette, “I think there is a need for women to express themselves and prove that desire is not a forbidden phenomenon. Most of these stories resonate with a lot of women who feel guilty about their sensuality. Perhaps one of the reasons that Fifty Shades of Grey did so well was that it started off by being an e-book. Women are a lot less inhibited online as there is a degree of anonymity.”
And what do women derive from reading these novels?
Sreemoyee says, “The aim of erotica is not a heightened sense of arousal but of consciousness. It is about understanding your body, your desires, your passions, your sexuality and knowing that it is okay to go after it.”
It goes beyond gender dimorphism because as Sreemoyee puts it, “Sex offers a beautiful sameness as two bodies and two souls coalesce. I want Sita’s Curse to be the beginning of a dialogue in which we can voice our needs without fear of being criticised, isolated and banished.”
