KAMA : The Story of the Kama Sutra

Jaya Misra is a writer, creative director and producer in the world of television, films and documentaries. She has also nurtured projects on sports, fashion and fiction.

Deeply influenced by the works of Anais Nin, Erica Jong, and Virginia Woolf, Jaya takes a keen interest in issues pertaining to women’s rights.

Jaya believes that Vatsyayana was not a mere ascetic, but one of ancient India’s first feminists.

Witty, passionate, caustic and opinionated, Jaya often writes tongue-in-cheek articles under a popular pseudonym.

Kama: The Story of the Kama Sutra is her debut novel.

Om Books International

First published in 2018 by

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Text copyright © Jaya Misra

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the publisher.

ISBN: 978-93-85252-80-8

Printed in India

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

The year was ad 273... 9

Prologue: The Fading Stars And The Silent Moon 15

Hunger 19

Glory And Grime 24

The God Of All Whores 29

Auparishtaka: The Unclean One 34

A King’s Dilemma 43

Fingers And Tongues 52

Of Venom And Blood 58

The Apology Of A Palace 64

Whispers From The Past 70

Scents Of Loneliness 77

Desire 87

The Moon In Mourning 96

Apples And Serpents 100

Sexile 104

Serendipity 116

The Curse Of The Moon 122

The Princess Of Pain 130

The Possibilities Of Being Me 136

Burnt By The Moon 146

The Dream 158

You And I 167

The Brother’s Folly 181

Roses And Reality 186

The Mother’s Challenge 193

Heat 200

The House Of Pain 212

Spin A Dream 219

The Serpent’s Prophecy 225

The Father, The Son And The Whore 233

Shiva Dasi 243

Inhale, Puff, Erase 246

Let’s Burn Our Boats Together 250

The Betrayal 256

Rebirth 261

Misery Of The Moon 264

The Moon, The Serpent And The Oath 270

Forsaken Orphan, Wounded Heart 277

The Agony Of Being 281

The Chinese Marvel 286

A Liver, An Eye And A Spilt Spleen 290

Dattaka’s Deliverance 298

Goddess Tara 305

The Ebb Of Time 320

Acknowledgements 328

Glossary 332

Dharmarthkamebyoh namah

(Salutations to Dharma, Artha and Kama)

― Kama Sutra, 1.1.1 Vatsyayana

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically,

musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason.

I am so thirsty for the marvellous that only the marvellous

has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into

something marvellous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me.

I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy,

and when ordinary life shackles me,

I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

― Anaïs Nin

Why is it that every time we like something very much,

we want to show it our penis?

― @curiousgawker

Prologue: The Fading Stars

And The Silent Moon

Tonight, the Moon is not mine.

Tonight, she turns her face away from me.

She sits in the sky, floating in silence, determined to spurn my affections; she chooses not to shine on me tonight.

Is she finally disgusted with me? Or is she tired of my trying nature; how I have taunted and teased her, made her weep in shame and agony…

Or does she hide her tears as she remembers the touch of my finger tips on her cool soft glowing face?

I sit under the Shiuli tree, the breeze softly blowing the river’s whispers to me…

I see these spidery words crawl from my shaking old fingertips; my veins look translucent tonight, as though the blood in me is water.

I ache with longing for her to come and soothe me with her cool silver touch.

But she has made up her mind tonight…

I think about my journey, I think about the Moon and me.

Some say that my story began the day the Moon Goddess descended into the lake in Kalpnagri. Others say it began the day my eunuch mother, Ramanna, found me in the village garbage disposal dump. When I look back at my life, I cannot pinpoint the precise moment my fate spun off course. Was it in the arms of my first lover, when I lost control and came like a teenage calf, or did it all start on the day King Narsimhagupta came back from the Great War of The South?

I am not a great man. I am most certainly not a brilliant scholar of erotic sciences, like Svetaketu and Bhabhravya. I also do not dare to add my name to the annals of history with stalwarts like Manu and Brihaspati. I am just a wanderer—an explorer who has spent his life restlessly searching for answers. The question was always one; the answers, however, came to me on their own. My quest has always been for love—that singular emotion of the greatest joy and the deepest pain. Love is perhaps the most elusive of all emotions. It is a fantasy, an unsustainable drama, and a definite source of power. It gives you a reason to live and to continue living.

Ah look, the Moon shrugs with derision as I say this. She scoffs at my impertinence…

The fleeting emotion of love cannot be captured or nurtured, it can never remain permanent. But as long as one feels it, as long as it makes the wheels of passion spin, one should keep it sated. I have put down, as impassively as I could in my thesis, what I feel is the best way to cherish the company of this mysterious visitor named Love—this is what constitutes my aphorisms of love, Kama Sutra. The compilation of the texts of ancient learned men and the humble narrative of my learning—that is my life’s work. It is the culmination of my journey. I am now at the end, awaiting my departure to my next life; my light fades, ebbing away from me. Like glow-worms that disintegrate in the morning light, I too will one day vanish from this world. But unlike those magical worms, I will not leave a lingering glow.

Most likely, the King will send his guards to demolish this house, these trees, the plants I water every day—and perhaps, to burn my manuscripts. That will be the end of my ‘life’s work’ and it will make no difference to me, from where I will be. If it survives, and you happen to chance upon it, when you turn to the first page, you will note that I have paid my salutations not to a mortal, but to the great Shastras—Dharma, Artha and Kama. For kings may rule our land, lives and bodies, but they can never rule our souls.

I know why the Moon is dismissive of me tonight. She knows my truth, she knows now that the Sutras of the Kama Sutra are in order, there is an urgency to speak of the other tale. My own tale. Oh, Moon. I speak the truth now. Look at me. Tomorrow we may not meet again…

Mine is the tale of Kama. I know that the story I hide within me has to be told. The words course through my blood—rushing and tumbling over each other, pushing and killing one another to pour out of my fingertips. Or should I just forget it? Bury this story? Should I pretend that ‘the aphorisms of love’ stem only from scholarly compilations and my febrile imagination? Should I lie and say that I am truly a celibate scholar and that none of this ever happened to me?

I could do that. But then, what of this tale? I need to tell this tale because centuries later, you may think I was a great ascetic who never beheld the beauty of a woman’s breasts, never experienced lovemaking such that I saw stars pouring from her eyes, that I never cheated or lied or ran away, that I wasn’t exiled and that I didn’t walk for years as a bitter man whose back had been shredded with daggers of betrayal by his very own.

They say a wise man only reveals his life’s work to the world, not the journey of its creation. But I am not a wise man. My life has been strewn with bitter broken hearts; and it is from this bloodied battlefield that springs forth the Kama Sutra. Like someone once said, ‘I never loved anyone as truly as I have loved my work.’ Maybe she was right. I have failed in love; only to succeed in quenching my thirst for knowledge.

I can see that the Moon agrees with this bitter irony. But she is not looking at me. Maybe the Moon will never look at me again. Or when she does, I will be no more. I write these words with only one regret, we could never meet again—the Moon and me.

I begin my tale with that day—the one day in my life when like samudra manthan, my life too split wide open and spiralled out of control. This story is of the day the King came back from war and I began a war with myself.

1

Hunger

Summer engulfed them like a hungry beast that year, its fury stinging their faces with hot blasts. King Narsimhagupta was coming back from war with his assorted band of warriors. It included men from his homeland and the mercenaries he had picked up on his way down south to annihilate the temple kingdoms. The Great War had taken six years to win—six long years of separation from his life in the kingdom of Varanasi. As his troops marched back home in the summer of ad 273, Narsimha rode his horse, towards the glimmering River Ganga and the distant cityscape.

He was tired, thirsty and hungry. The ravages of war were evident on his gaunt face and hooded eyes. He quenched his thirst by taking a swig from the leather pouch hanging by his side but it did nothing to satiate his hunger—hunger for the nubile flesh of his bride Ratnavati whom he had married just before he had left for war. He had fantasised exploring her warm fair body, every night, for six years. The mere thought of ripping her clothes apart made him ride faster.

~

Ratnavati, Princess of Taxila, was the pure-blooded progeny of the legendary Chandramani dynasty. Marrying her was a calculated step taken to extend his kingdom. It was a triumph for Narsimha to have her as his wife. Shy and scared, she was only fourteen when they were married. Throughout their eight-day long wedding ceremony, he watched her like a hawk. He observed the delicate bends of her wrists, the soft crook of her elbow, and the skin of her waist—wrapped in silk, glowing through the bejewelled kamardani. He admired her feet—soft and small, coloured in henna. Her small breasts were covered in fine cloth. He stared at the small of her back as she walked ahead of him, during their nuptial rounds. He noticed her fingers offering prayers to Agni, the God of Fire. He eyed the tilt of her tiny nose, adorned with a round diamond-studded nose ring, while her face was hidden behind a heavy veil. With each day of the ceremony, his desire grew.

Finally, he saw her face, as she raised her veil for the sindoor ceremony. On seeing the famed crescent birthmark on her forehead, he was struck by her luminescent and ethereal beauty. He walked into her chamber on the first night and tore off her wretched dupatta. He looked straight into her shocked eyes as he lifted her heavy bejewelled lehenga and took her swiftly like an animal. Then, he spent the entire night staring at her as she sobbed into her pillow. He revelled in the fact that he had reduced the royal lineage of a pampered Princess to that of a roadside whore. The thought satisfied him immensely.

A month later, he was summoned to the borders of Kanchipura where he stayed for six years. In those initial thirty days of nascent matrimony, Narsimhagupta raped his bride innumerable times. Leaving her listless and exhausted without a backward glance, he then left for war. A man of few words and little remorse, Narsimha never gave a single thought to his bride’s happiness. Riding towards Varanasi now, Narsimha idly wondered how large her breasts must have become.

As the riders hurtled past, Manngupta, Narsimha’s younger brother, slowed his horse and turned towards the nearby woods. He was bald, oily, fat and faithless. His eyes had fallen on a handsome young soldier on the way who he then proceeded to drag into the woods with him. Rather agile for his size, Mann jumped off his horse, pulling the boy towards a tree stump. Swiftly, he bent him over and stripped off his dhoti. The boy screamed in terror, his voice scaring the swallows that flew off the branches on which they were nesting. Mann whipped the boy’s buttocks with his short crop. He pumped himself hard into the boy till he came grunting like a pig. As he reached an orgasm, his shuddering body slowed to a halt. At this vulnerable moment, the young soldier turned in retaliation and lunged at Mann’s throat with a curved dagger. Before he could get the startled Prince, someone threw a noose around the soldier’s neck and choked him to death within a second.

Mann’s saviour was Ajyut. Tall, dark and handsome, he was Mann’s lover. He was also the only man Manngupta was wary of. Ajyut sauntered up to Mann as the body of the young boy fell to the side.

Your brain slips into your testicles ever so often that now it resides there, he said derisively. Mann was heaving as he collected himself. Before he could speak, Ajyut planted a hard slap on his face. He then came very close to him, his palm on Manngupta’s oily cheek, and his rough thumb caressing the pink flabby jowl.

He whispered, Death on your own doorstep? Just when you are entering your kingdom, victorious and jubilant? How wise is that? We are almost on the shores of River Ganga, try and keep your penis in your dhoti till we reach Varanasi. Your brother thinks you are a foolish whore. Don’t go out of your way to prove him right, Prince Mann.

Mann felt intoxicated in Ajyut’s proximity. He was besotted with the handsome rogue. He flicked his tongue greedily, wetting his bulbous lips as Ajyut reached down and kissed him passionately. Soon after, the two joined Narsimha on the ride to Varanasi.

Narsimha saw the look of satisfaction on their faces as they galloped towards him. ‘Flabby whore,’ he thought to himself, smiling at his younger sibling. Narsimha kept him close because he knew that Mann was like a serpent in the grass who would lose no opportunity to strike at him when the time came. Narsimha chose to keep his enemies close to him. Given their family history of turning against their own flesh and blood, it was a wise choice.

After copious amounts of alcohol, their faces betrayed their true intentions. Narsimha knew exactly how his younger brother’s brain functioned. The entire army knew about Mann’s preferences. They were wary of what he had in his tent. Young boys barely old enough to be soldiers remained scarred by Mann’s sexual experiments. His depravity had crossed all boundaries. From bestiality to orgies to keeping young soldiers naked on a leash for his merriment, Mann had experimented with every kind of perversion in the last six years. Surviving war and battling death almost every day had turned the brothers and their army into animals who stopped at nothing to satisfy their sexual urges. War had brought out their inner monsters and they galloped forth with thoughts of what they would do to the city’s soft-bodied men and women.

Narsimha always encouraged his brother’s perversions and kept Mann occupied throughout the war with depraved diversions. Nothing escaped his eye. He noticed every time Mann dragged a soldier into the woods and even now, he could see that the caravan had a section in which Mann’s pets—both humans and animals—were being taken to Varanasi. There were young men from the enemy camp, bound and tied, in rickety wooden cages that were being pulled by prisoners of war. Some even had bamboo sticks shoved into their rectums. The stench of vomit and blood reached Narsimha’s nostrils as he rode at the head of the troops. But that was not what bothered Narsimha who himself had a repertoire of torture techniques. Ajyut was the cause of his worry. He wasn’t the doe-eyed boy Mann mostly preferred. Hawk-eyed, agile and a warrior of repute, Ajyut was hard to read and hard to get rid of. He had stuck to Mann like a shadow for twenty years now. Narsimha decided to remove him from Mann’s proximity and send him back after a few weeks to govern Kanchipura. A few months away in a strange land would fix Ajyut’s haughty demeanour. Intently focussed on the distant cityscape, he saw their tired victorious expressions and strategised their end with a smirk.

The air was heady with hunger and anticipation. ‘Everyone will get sex tonight,’ he thought wryly, ‘if not with their wives or courtesans, then with the Veshyas of Ganikapur.’

Narsimhagupta surveyed the faces of his companions and smelled six years of festering desire.

2

Glory And Grime

The city of Varanasi was in a state of panic. The men—their men were coming back. Elephants decked in finery lined the streets. The city’s best musicians had been summoned to the royal court. They sat nervously, swatting flies in the hot sun. The ghats had been washed and adorned with elaborate floral arrangements. There was pandemonium at the market place. Meat was being carved and sold at exorbitant rates; vegetables and fruits had already disappeared, sold to the fortunate ones who had come early. Greek merchants sat surrounded by their foreign wares, luring housewives to buy their lamps and aromatic oils so that the women could seduce their men. Clever gypsies sold stones and potions at spiralling rates to insecure wives, who wanted to make sure their husbands came home that night instead of visiting the famous brothel district of the village—Ganikapur.

Ganikapur—the name quickened the heartbeat of every man. Traders, travellers, merchants, tailors, goldsmiths, successful artists, failed poets, humble scholars, fiery sailors, crass water bearers, rough cart drivers, priests, homosexuals, eunuchs—everyone had their eyes on Ganikapur. It was the part of town that had once been home to the most beautiful courtesans of the country.

Ganikapur had a fascinating history. Like a young woman at the peak of her youth, there was a time when she had glistened and glowed with sensuality and confidence, secure in her charms. Sorceress Ganikapur had seduced many kings to come and spend their wealth at her doorstep. But the years had been unkind, and soon she lost her sparkle. The trees that had once filled her lanes with cool green shade were as dusty as the roofs over which they drooped. Her houses and shops wore an air of neglect, her colours had faded and she looked jaded. As jaded as the women who stood leaning on the windowsills, chewing betel leaves, talking to their parrots, combing each other’s hair, and calling to the men below to enjoy the pleasures they had to offer.

The changing face of Varanasi had reflected on the fortunes of Ganikapur. As Varanasi became richer, the kings grew more powerful. One fine morning, Narsimhagupta’s grandfather, King Krichakkagupta had woken up, irritable and groggy after a night of revelry in Ganikapur. That same day, he had ordered to build a Palace on the hill behind the royal court. He had grown tired of travelling from his Palace to this whorehouse. He wanted his favourite whores moved to a beautiful new Palace of pleasure. The Courtesans’ Palace was Krichakkagupta’s architectural masturbation. It loomed large, shining white on the hill like a cavernous marble womb, the wind blowing gently through its corridors. It came to be known as the Palace of Sighs.

Krichakkagupta’s chosen courtesans had taken with them all the elegance and glory of Ganikapur, leaving her sad and forlorn. She was like an unwanted woman with sagging breasts and dull eyes, no longer adept at the art she had taught so many. The fickle courtesans had giggled and twittered as they had packed their belongings, leaving for the glittering new Palace on the hills.

After their departure, Ganikapur had looked bereft of beauty and youth. She wept at her misfortune, reduced to the fate of two-bit whores who lined her roads like wrinkles, fighting over clients, ready to sell themselves for a single copper coin. The other occupants were pot-carrier women, daily wage labourers, abandoned wives, deformed women and widows who desperately eked out their meagre living in the desolate lanes of Ganikapur. However, as the wise men say, time is like a serpent that weaves across the cosmos, ultimately reaching back as the symbol of infinity, to eat its own tail. The wise men have also said that Brihaspati—the God of All Three Worlds—forces Time to give back whatever it takes. Glory, money, power, joy, and sadness—they are all parts of Time’s debt to mankind. But Time is a cunning one. It viciously eats one’s youth, making one feel that those years were fleeting. Then, when one is old, it slows its pace, making each day harder and longer than the one before. Age is Time’s ultimate revenge.

Time, the capricious one, sought its revenge on the glittering ganikas of the Palace of Sighs as well. The Palace of Sighs with its hundred steps needed to be stocked with inexhaustible beauty. Since the fountain of eternal youth does not exist in reality, the Palace was replenished periodically with new courtesans who sparkled with fresh youth and beauty. The once-stunning ganikas—proud owners of firm breasts and lithe waists—became ageing harridans who had to be replaced by younger courtesans with the charms they themselves had lost. It was only a question of time before youth faded and a continuous feeling of insecurity hung in the air. The sighing soon turned to shrieking and the King stopped visiting the Palace of Sighs. In turn, royal wives began to wake up with bruises.

This was what the Queen Mother had feared—the glory of the Palace of Sighs was important for maintaining the peace of the royal household. It helped keep up all the pretences of elegance and indulgence that the royal household lived with. The result of this wheel of misfortunes was that the Queen Mother had the older bickering courtesans sent back to Ganikapur with tidy little sums of gold.

Ganikapur welcomed the ageing but still beautiful courtesans with open arms. They wept together for a few days, cursed the woes of ageing and then Ganikapur threw open her doors and windows, shook her trees, cleaned her dusty corners and encouraged the homecoming courtesans to lay their plans. The clever ageing courtesans realised that the King was not the only man in the country who would pay for sex. So with the gold that the Queen Mother had given them, they set up bustling brothels that did roaring business on this side of town.

The Palace of Sighs was out of bounds for the local townsmen and outsiders. The elite ganikas in the King’s harem were a fantasy for the ordinary men who never trespassed on the hundred steps to the Palace, as that would result in castration, if not death. But Ganikapur was open to all. Each penis was worshipped reverently with joy, regardless of to whom it belonged. The ‘good’ women of Varanasi utterly despised the ‘fallen’ ganikas as their men diligently paid homage to them. Ganikapur witnessed more business in one night than the main market of Varanasi did in a month’s time. Rumour did the rounds that the tax paid by the whores of Varanasi’s Ganikapur equalled the amount paid by the entire town. All men came to satiate their desires in the famous lanes. On any given night, one could walk through the lanes and observe the business of flesh taking place in smooth and swiftly concluded transactions.

Women stood coquettishly with their breasts thrust out, their nipples coyly peeking through garlands of flowers. Standing against indigo walls, they posed, hips jutting out in brightly coloured doorways. Fat men, bald men and men breathing lustily thronged the lanes. Some followed the pimps into mud houses with arched doors while others stood, squeezing and feeling the breasts of women—just as one would check the ripeness of tomatoes in the market. Finally, Ganikapur breathed in peace. She wasn’t her young glorious self, but she was older, wiser, popular and very rich.

3

The God Of All Whores

Damodar raced into the seedy lanes of Ganikapur, heaving and rasping as he pushed his bulky frame forward, frantically searching for someone.

‘The same place at night is mysterious and filled with temptations but the harsh daylight reveals its true nature,’ Damodar thought, as he ran along the narrow lanes. Once a sweeper, Damodar was a large, heavily built man, who has risen to become the right hand of Ramanna—the Head of the Palace of Sighs.

Houses flanked the lanes of Ganikapur, where the women of the night were performing their daily rituals. They were bathing in the open, rubbing sandalwood on their bodies, and washing clothes. Some had even begun their day’s cooking on angithis. Children were running helter-skelter, unabashed by the nakedness of the women around them. Some women were leaning on the mud-caked walls, waiting for customers that sultry afternoon. Damodar