What kind of girl do you take me for?
– Promiscuous, Nelly Furtado
Vira
You might have heard of me. You might have read an article, or googled me, or glimpsed my face on the back cover of my book, or in the pages of a newspaper or magazine. Once, I was somewhat famous. Not so much now, thankfully. There’s a folder in a locked godrej cupboard in my parents’ home, filled with yellowing newspaper articles about my child prodigy debut into the world of writing, my New York Times bestselling graphic novel, my appearances at literature festival. Etcetera, etcetera.
If you’ve read one of these, you may have seen my face – slightly strained, self-conscious, bespectacled. You’ll notice the traces of acne, faint scars and slightly protruding teeth, not quite pretty enough; someone who has to get by on intelligence and diligence. Writes on epics and myths and all that. Must be a good girl, you think.
And for years, I have been. A good girl to please others.
That child prodigy stuff was over half a lifetime ago. Now I feel like a washed-up writer, menopause on the horizon, my crone-self growing day by day; like a bit of a failure too sometimes, when I see newer, younger writers flash to fame. I envy them. Sometimes, admittedly, they are better than me. They’ve honed their craft, they’ve worked their sentences, they've gone at it. They’ve stayed at it, persistent.
Whereas sometimes I think to myself - you just dined off reputation of being a child prodigy for far too long.
Not such a good girl after all. Flitting in and out of writing, never consistent with my output and routine, and I’ve kept my publisher waiting for my book far too long.
I really wanted to be a good girl.
There’s a voice in my brain, the Sanskaari Naari, telling me if I said what I’ve really been upto, what I’m really thinking, naturally everything will be taken away from me. My myth-inspired books will languish in bookstores, untouched. You will not let your children, and nieces and nephews read my children’s books– I’m just too disturbing for that. Not a good role model. That was fun while it lasted, keeping everyone happy.
Perhaps that's why I haven't written for years. If I can’t be honest, real, truthful, I’ll have to be silent.
If I choose to be intimate with you – to show the ugly places, the vulnerable places, the places of shame, it may cost me.
This comes with a price then.
Bhayanaka
There was a time, as a child…I don’t want to write about it again.
There was that time, on a lonely beach in Goa, when I felt terror, as two men chased me.
There was that time, in my apartment, when a neighbour tried to break down the door to rape me.
Sometimes terror is not just an act, or rape.
Sometimes it comes in small doses. A slap, a word.
Sometimes it is vaginismus or pain during a consensual act, when the body tightens, involuntarily, and I fight against myself as I spasm, and pretend to my partner that everything is fine, okay. I fake it. That is another fear. If I reveal the pain, that I will be rejected. I will be alone.
He leaves me anyway.
Sometimes it is the flare of fear in my gut, on a dark lonely street, when I spy a motorcycle and two young men, hurtling towards me, headlights on, and feel trapped.
Sometimes it is a proposition made in an office, or a place of power, and the belief that no one will believe me. (Is that what he really meant? You’re just imagining it all – that’s what Sanskaari Nari’s mother says in my mind.)
I refuse to remember more.
Adhbuta
The plastic that sheaths your lover, that barricades and protects your womb against the assault of sperm, is born out of death. Death that is hundreds of millions of years old, the decaying remains of organisms and plants, pressed and compressed together, turned into something invaluable in your hand.
When you make love, the piece of plastic that your lover throws so casually away afterwards – that took 300 million years to make.
The ghosts of the past, dead matter, poking into our wombs. Past present, organic, inorganic, human and non-human. All mixing together.
Promiscuous. Pro-miscere. Miscere. To mix.
Bibhatsa
Once there was a young man who – I realize this only in retrospect – was slightly infatuated with me.
I was at that time probably quite attractive, but in my head I still saw myself as an acne prone, bespectacled nerd even though I was thin and tended to have a wardrobe that featured (cheaply purchased) outfits of diaphanous fabrics in cleavage forward styles. This produced a kind of cognitive dissonance that, now, is a source of income to psychotherapists. At that time it cordoned me into a sex-deprived lifestyle.
This young man, after taking me on a couple of (very cheap) dates (neither of us had much money) revealed a truth about intimacy that completely scuppered our chances at achieving precisely that kind of intimacy.
Sex, he told me, was messy, because of the various body fluids involved.
At that time, I was not completely inexperienced, but I could count my sexual experiences on one hand. I suffered from a problematic belief, not uncommon, that sex is something shameful, and that to get past the shame one must drink, find another willing body, search for dark place to mate and avoid all discussions of feelings, and never speak to each other again:
In my head I associated shameless, ideal sex with perfectly manicured, bodypolished men and women. Bodily fluids – although certainly involved – were transferred from one anatomy to the other with the least amount of spillage, the way society ladies poured tea into one beautiful, ceramic, gold-patterned tea cup without a splattering drop.
In my mind I imagined good, well-mannered, properly-done sex with this sort of precision and behavior. In rougher moments – moments of passion perhaps – it would be like the way the chai-seller down the road would raise his glass on high and perfect, furious flow from one grimy glass to the other, without a single drop spilling. That strong, smooth, perfect gush of tea.
No mess whatsoever.
But now this young man had planted thoughts of stains on pillow cases {which provoked other anxieties--at the time I resided with a dainty, society-lady grandmother (for saving-on-rent purposes) completely opposed to spillage of any kind}. My housewifely mind became busy: how does one remove these?
I know how hard I have scrubbed to rub out menstrual blood stains from sparkling white bed sheets in this house. Would Ariel be best? Or comfort stain remover? Or Vanish?.
Would this necessitate tissues? A dustbin as a convenience receptacle for post-sex-tissue deposits?
These thoughts chased each other around my cluttered, disorganized sex-deprived brain.
How did other people manage this?
I spoke to a more sexually experienced friend who, when bodily fluids were mentioned, screwed up her nose and exclaimed “ew!”
Another told me to book a hotel (which I could not afford) for then stain removal etc would be the problem of the hotel staff to deal with, and they probably had secret manuals to deal with sexual stain removal. I imagined a coven of house-keeping staff at a hotel, conducting a strange ritual in robes to dissolve stains in a golden cauldron of Vanish! Liquid.
When I explained that neither of us had much money, she said “This in fact is your problem. You need to date a better class of men.” (Aka richer men, or men who had the money to spend on sexual escapades. Not the penurious poets and writers I tended to meet).
Money can resolve some matters pertaining to sex stain / body fluid removal, but it does not mean that the man in question is generous in bed. Or in other places.
But I did not know this then.
So we never had sex.
Hasya
In my fantasies of perfect sex, conditioned by anatomically perfect Hollywood people, bodies are smooth, unblemished and hairless and perfectly moisturized.
I have a condition called ichthyosis, (dry scaly skin on my legs) (on some days I think it makes me a descendent of the famous Melusine, the mermaid, who must have had dry scaly skin on her legs, and apparently spent every sunday sequestered in a bathtub, but was nonetheless enchantingly beautiful and married a french aristocrat, and thus is ancestress to all the royal houses of Europe, and most of its aristocrats, which in my imagination, makes her ancestress of Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the latter a woman who apparently likes her feet sucked, and this may in fact be a desire brought about by the dry itchiness of ichthyosis.)
(Maybe this is a confession on par with the balding confession of my former admirer, but I do not know you, dear reader, so in real life, we are unlikely to have sex.)
So I spend Sundays in homage to Melusine sequestered in the bathroom, rubbing all kinds of moisturizers and petroleum jellies before I shave my skin. But – I wear glasses, and in the bath, like Melusine, as I try to render my skin perfect, the hot water steams on my spectacles and so I can not quite shave my legs perfectly. So horror manifests, sometimes, in the throes of romance, I catch sight of a patch of hair skin behind my knees, on my calf, and the choir of house-wife ancestresses scream like Furies, and the sex is spoilt, and turns into some sort of clumsy weird farce, where in I try to hide the hairy patch from discovery from my lover.
Once in an attempt to hide this, I attempted to place my cat (the nearest object at hand, as he was prowling around the bed, jealous of my attentions to male lover) strategically across the back of calf muscles, but this did not work, especially when cat revealed claws and resisted. I replaced the cat with a pillow, and then exchanged the pillow for a towel.
At which point my lover, in exasperation, asked me “What the hell is going on?”
And then I had to confess the secret of the hairy patch missed during shaving on my calf,
We began a conversation about various kinds of hair removal, how gender roles play a role in hair removal methods, and I began telling him the story about the time I had to have a pedicure and because of ichthyosis etc, the pedicurist had to shave the soles of my feet with a razor, in an unisex salon. I remember feeling shamed, fas a vast line of young men were witnessing this as they waited in turn, to get their backs waxed.
There is other clumsiness in sex. No one speaks of urine-scented genitalia.
During my younger, hormone raging days there was certainly some sort of instinct or feel for sex, but now what I remember is the hilariousness of it.
I do remember a young man who worried if I might need an iron to iron out creases on a dress post-sex, and his iron was not working, and this troubled him, as when I left his house, the creases would be some sort of scandalous signal that sex had happened.
Karuna
There have been other hair-related issues. I remember another encounter with a young man who preferred hairless genitalia.
When I tried to account for this, I initially shaved, but I could sense a slight disappointment. Eager to please him, I experimented with a Brazilian wax, which was an experience that I now remember more clearly than the sexual encounter: hours spent with a patient, waxing woman who described her experiences waxing the vaginas of other women. In this I felt a sense of community and sisterhood with the other women, who had endured hot wax being applied and yanked off their privates, in an attempt to meet sexual standards. As she applied and removed wax she told me about her life, her two daughters, one of who was disabled, the fights that she had with her husband, and her fear and worry for her daughters during the pandemic, as their schooling stopped.
We spoke the word brazilian wax, were both Indian women, in a sweltering Indian summer – what was Brazilian about this, or about our hair or our private parts? I didn’t get it. She confessed to me that she did the Brazilian wax on herself as well.
I remember a sticky bit ripping off, and wincing with pain. I tried to hide this, but she noticed, I remember her apology, her gentleness with me, the soft cooling pressure she applied with a wet cloth.
In this, weirdly, I felt greater intimacy, and human connection, more gentleness and compassion, more care than I experienced with many a lover.
Maybe it was about that rare camaraderie and friendship, that experience of shared and witnessed suffering bringing waxing woman and woman-to-be-waxed together, bridging socio-economic divides and lifestyles, bringing women together in shared mutual experience. The waxing woman, who gently attended to me, is most likely not of the same caste. I suspect this, but I do not ask. I try to forget caste, but sometimes I wonder if that blindness, that forgetting is worse.
to think, in another time, place, it would have been a crime for her to touch me, that too, so intimately.
Marxism in a capitalist, classist, casteist society.
Raudra, or the List of Anger
1. I’m angry at the times I’ve been told that what I did wasn’t exactly sex (then, young man, what the f**k was it?) and didn’t ‘mean’ anything.
2. I’m angry at the pain I put myself through, physically and emotionally.
3. I’m angry at the time that I was told that I wasn’t good enough, or didn’t live up to someone’s else’s expectations of a lover.
4. Sometimes exhaustion is just repressed anger. I am tired of the hypocrisy of being a good girl. I am tired of the fact that a good girl upholds the establishment, the patriarchy, the caste-ism, and unconsciously, never examines her part or takes responsibility for how these structures are upheld.
5. I am angry at having to play by rules set up generations ago, embodied in texts that also tell one where one can be touched, and by whom, and prescribe punishments if you touch out of assigned categories. The rules can not be separated from standards of beauty. (The Sanskaari Naari herself is light-skinned, upper caste, appears caste blind in her dealings with the world, but this secretly hides an instinct, repressed into her unconsciousness which can tell caste apart. The sanskaari Nari is body positive to others, but careful about what she eats, lest she gains weight, and tweezes herself into incoherence. She is a hypocrite.)
6. I’m angry at my shame.
7. I’m angry that I felt the need to wax my vagina to please a callous, selfish and insensitive lover.
8. I am tired at the Sanskaari Nari within who wants things perfect, clean, sanitised, who can never critique her culture or its ancient inequities. Who can not live with complexity or mess, who is too scared, within herself, to break boundaries, to examine the aeons of prejudice and privilege that have made her, shaped her desires.
9. I’m angry at the idea that we must pursue passion, in our careers and in our love lives. Not everyone can.
10. I’m angry at the men who said they felt love for me, but no passion. Here, I express what I never could do to them – that to me, passion feels so close to anger; that it is anger, in another form.
11. When I experience anger in another, my response is fear. How is that safe? How is that loving? Can safe pleasure coexist easily with anger and fear? It takes an artist to manage this.
12. I am angry at myself.
Shantam
As I grow older I like to linger on the memories of the hilariousness of it, the endearing awkwardness and imperfection of intimacy.
I’ve realized that the people who enjoy and have the most fun with sex are those who account for, and revel in the clumsy weird strangeness of sex, to see it as human, to be human. To not attempt to be a doll, an idol, a statue in the throes of sex.
What does sexual experience mean?
Is it a vast amount of lovers?
Is the ecstatic transcendental experience of orgasm (which I’ve had with myself courtesy of a vibrator, thank you online shopping)?
Or is everything all together, the absurdity of desire, the awkwardness of passion, the bewildering places where one finds compassion and intimacy – and the tranquility of having experienced it – and also let it go?
Is this tranquility, this “seen that, done that” attitude, peace, born of self-realization?
Or is this peace a peri-menopausal plunge of hormones and loss of libido which I’m mistaking for the detachment born of disillusionment?
I don’t know.
Shringar
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”
– Audrey Lorde
I know this: my sexuality is for myself.
Sometimes, I don’t wish to share it. It is just for me. I imagine it to be a tropical island surrounded by azure waters, a treasure. Sometimes, it shifts form – an oasis in the midst of a parched dessert, or a gem, a brilliant, multifaceted diamond for me to enjoy. Something that sparkles, alone, in my room, when I’ve curtains drawn against the light, a gem I take out only, when far away from the prying eyes of my neighbours.
In that dim darkness, by myself, with myself, the diamond shimmers into a snake, I feel the coiling, tightening, the movement within me, the urge, the tightening squeezing, shooting up my spine, moving me, touching me within, the essence of me.
As it rises, as I feel close and more intimate with myself, as I feel moved, tender, vulnerable, I feel that this beauty. Beauty is not something seen, but it is felt, in the aligning of the self, in the touching of that innermost part of self, in the tenderness, in the feeling, it is beauty. There is no other word for it.
I melt.
Girls, women – those of you who read this, do not give your beauty away.
It is not true that you can not feel this on your own.
At times, in the presence of a lover, it may be a touch, a moment, or even the touch of skin on skin, you will feel this in their company, fleetingly.
The world will ask you to give away this part of yourself. In the name of duty, family, love. To share it with others and to give their pleasure more importance than your own, or to give it up.
Don’t.
THE RASAS
What does it mean to use the Rasas as a framework for feelings? It’s classical aesthetic standard, where emotions and feelings are made distinct, categorised — a clinical aestheticization of the messiness of life, of generations past and present moving together, of the past breeding in the present, of emotional experience. I am wary of the term classical, I am wary of classical ideas of narrative and literature, that attempt to sanitize, categorize, and in doing so leave out the blurred boundaries, the things that are not this nor that.
I am wary of categories that turn into rules. I am wary of rules, particularly in our cultural, civilization context, that attempt to separate, that do not allow for mixing, and in the end these rigid categories create hierarchies. Is Vira superior to Bibhatsa? Karuna to Adbhuta?
Like caste, do emotions have a hierarchy?
I am wary of what is left out, I am wary of what can be and what can’t be together. But in life, all the shades of experience are mixed in, unsightly and complicated yet deliciously messy, juicy.
That’s the truth, isn’t it?
Sanskaari Naari’s Cat Loving Alter Ego is a writer in real life, best known for her retellings of mythology for children. She hopes that if you like this piece, her books for adult audiences -- The Prince and The Missing Queen --may appeal to you. She lives in Bangalore with two cats.
