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See it as you feel it!

If for Pavan K. Varma, the Kama Sutra is about the art of enjoying desire, for Deepak Chopra, it is an enlightening spiritual guide. SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY notes their different interpretations

PHOTO: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

SPRIRITUAL SENSUALITY Deepak Chopra says lovemaking is akin to spiritual achievement

So much has been written about Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra that yet another book on the subject seems absolutely an avoidable luxury. But even as you are reading this, there might be someone keying in his interpretation of the timeless book of ancient India. Simply because generations of people have found this 2000-year-old textbook on the art of lovemaking stimulating enough. But spiritual? Not many have, surely.

Among the handful is the popular U.S.-based spiritual guru of Indian origin, Deepak Chopra. His "Kama Sutra and the Seven Spiritual Laws of Love", released in India by Jaico Books, is all about seeing Vatsyayana's work as a means to spiritual gain.

Your obvious surprise at his idea of bridging together sex and spirituality brings a knowing smile to Chopra's face and he replies with the story behind the birth of his interpretation. "Once, on my annual visit to India, I was at a bookstore, looking at one of the Kama Sutras and after a while I felt, so strongly, that the four goals of life spoken of by Vatsyayana - kama, artha, dharma and moksha - finally point to spiritual gain."

He says in the larger scheme of things, these four goals of life are connected to each other, in reverse order.

A journey

Kama, on the lowest rung, is also good on its own terms but lacking a spiritual component, it vanishes without a trace. "Sensuality is not glorified in its own right, it attains its glory as an aspect of a spiritual journey," Chopra underlines the crux of his analysis.

For someone who took the spiritual path after being "disillusioned" with science, he wants you to believe him.

Interlaced with artistic illustrations, Chopra's tome, however, elucidates the point that Kama Sutra has come down to us from "a society dominated by priests and temples", and so is much more free sexually than spiritually. For the same reason, the author feels, Vatsyayana stayed away from bringing in a parallel between both the experiences overtly.

"I found some of the things that Vatsyayana said quite humorous, such as how to attract your neighbour's wife, etc. He must have been a great observer," notes Chopra in a lighter vein.

Sitting in the lobby of New Delhi's Oberoi hotel, attracting enough attention with his familiar face, Chopra elaborates on his "seven spiritual laws of love" beginning with attraction, then infatuation, communion, intimacy, surrender, passion, and ecstasy.

"It is in love that you forget who you are, your ego, your caste, your bank balance, same as in spiritual enlightenment," he says, giving another instance to drive home his point. Particularly keeping the changing mores of society in perspective, the medical doctor-turned-spiritual guru feels looking at the spiritual side of Kama Sutra could offer a solution.

So he writes, "... in our time sex is talked about incessantly, with very confused results. In my experience what couples want is a way out of this confusion. Having tried sex much earlier and more freely than any previous generation, they are not frightened by it - rather, they wonder what it really means."

Is there really a lesson to be learnt here then?

PHOTO: RAJEEV BHATT

FOR PLEASURE IN EQUAL MEASURE Pavan K. Varma says Vatsyayana was never a spokesman for hedonism

Even after 2000 years of existence, a new adaptation of Vatsayana's Kama Sutra always arouses sufficient curiosity. So diplomat-turned-ICCR head Pavan K. Varma's version, just launched by Roli Books in New Delhi, evokes interest, `generally'. "Imagine, over 2000 years ago, living in a male-dominated society, Vatsyayana wrote that men should be sensitive to women's sexual needs," he says with obvious regard to the sage, about whom very little is known till date but against whom the ultimate contribution of ancient India can be put down to the subject of erotica.

Varma, trying to offer a fresh slant here, has taken the line of how Vatsayana's treatise was not just about sexual postures but essentially for providing an equal platform to women in the art of lovemaking. "Men who claim to be great lovers are usually the most ignorant," he writes in his introduction. With a shocking pink cover, the pages of Varma's book are bunched together with elaborate illustrations of Vatsyayana's sex sutras and postures, peppered with the author's remarks like "Vatsyayana is all for good technique, but he believes that good sex is more than just that... .enough of theory, I can hear my more impatient readers say."

Erotic sentiment

Varma underlines that Vatsyayana wanted to take men's innate sexual instinct to a fine art, but he laughs aloud when asked why, when you leaf through Kama Sutra, all it raises is your basic instinct? Without quite responding to the query, he says, "Desire is a gift of god and the book is about enjoyment of desire but I envy his field work!"

He has a reason for choosing to write about Kama Sutra among his other topics like Ghalib, Krishna, how it is to be an Indian today, Gulzar's poetry (soon to be released), our cultural identity (in the pipeline), etc. "Somewhere in the avalanche of flesh around us we have lost the erotic sentiment. I got attracted to the subject when I was writing my book on Krishna, his form as a lover, as an embodiment of Shringarmurti. He was an accomplished lover and it is an art."

Varma says, "Even Vatsyayana was never in favour of a quickie. Though he was an uninhibited proponent of sex he was never a spokesman for hedonism, for license, and that makes it more than what we usually consider it for." But alas, for 2000 years, Kama Sutra has been known only for its sole chapter on lovemaking postures, some evocative, some provocative, some so outlandish. And Varma perhaps knows that his effort at bringing in a new angle will not make much of a dent in the age-old impression.

Meanwhile, happy viewing, oops, reading!

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