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Indian writer and columnist Shobhaa Dé speaks with Mayank Chhaya on her latest book ‘The Sensuous Self: Explorations of Love, Sex & Romance’ | SAM Conversation
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00:29The women of India to stop settling for what she calls, and I quote her now, boring dal-chowl sex when life can offer spicy, finger-licking chicken-chilli fry, best-selling author and columnist Shobha Day is appending sexual chivalets in her latest book.
00:47The sensuous self-explorations of love, sex and romance, her 28th book, is her prescription to get over the humdrum notions of intimacy and romance.
00:59From invoking Kalidas, arguably India's greatest playwright about erotica, to offering her own insights accumulated over decades as an astute observer of urban India, Day's book has been well-received.
01:12She spoke to MCR from Mumbai.
01:15Welcome to Maingsha Reports, Ms. Day. It's always a great pleasure to have you.
01:22Looking forward to our interaction.
01:23Oh, thank you, sir.
01:25That's lovely of you to say.
01:27You know, I must put it out right there that I haven't read the book.
01:31I'm just basically flying blind, but I have a fair amount of idea of what the theme is about.
01:37So I hope you don't mind my broad questions.
01:40Not at all.
01:42Let's go for it.
01:42Okay.
01:44You are exhorting women to stop getting, settling for boring dal chawal sex and go for spicy finger-licking chili chicken fry kind of sex.
01:57While that's self-explanatory, tell me a bit more about the distinction that you make between the two.
02:02Well, I think what is termed as a duty sex in other cultures and communities is what women are expected to perform, particularly in arranged marriage situations, but also in romantic situations where they don't have much agency over what they would prefer.
02:28So the reference is to really encourage them to discover their own potential as partners who will be enjoying the love-making process as much as their male companions, partners, husbands.
02:48Yeah, but I mean, you say that you're issuing a certain degree of freedom in a large population of women,
02:55women, which unfortunately doesn't exist even now, to the extent that we are talking about.
03:03So how do you get around that problem?
03:07No, it's tough.
03:08It's a big challenge because what is also encouraging is that thanks to social media, a lot of women in smaller town Indias and the villages of India are finding self-expression through the TikTok videos that they are making,
03:27the reels that they present themselves in various forms of fantasy, and therefore I think they are asserting themselves and their rights to be who they are, to be themselves.
03:41It's a big, big step forward because for almost for decades, years, centuries, women had no such platform to express a view, to express an opinion, to just be out there and maybe enjoying themselves.
03:58Right.
03:59Right.
04:00You know, levity aside, India has had a multi-millennial history of a very open and enlightened approach to sensuality.
04:11And let me just read a passage by Kalidas, which I read frequently, just one line where he says about Urvashi,
04:21.
04:26Now, this is fifteen, sixteen hundred years ago, fourth century.
04:31I mean, if we were that sixteen hundred years ago, what happened in the interim?
04:38I'll tell you exactly what's happened in the interim.
04:43We have a rich tapestry, a rich history of a very sensuous past in India.
04:50We have celebrated all the senses.
04:52We've celebrated pleasure through poetry.
04:55Kalidasa, who you just quoted.
04:57I've quoted extensively in my book.
05:00I see.
05:01But a lot of the chapters begin with Kalidasa, end with Kalidasa.
05:06So, the idealized lover, as represented in Meghdoot, that a cloud can be your messenger, with the most poetic messages that the cloud is bearing to your loved one, is in itself so inspiring.
05:24What happened subsequently is that the British came.
05:28Till the British arrived on our shores, we were very much aware and in touch with our legacy.
05:37And it was celebrated, whether it's on temple sculptures, painting, art, music, our spices, the way we dress, the way we actually live our lives, our day-to-day lives.
05:50But there were no restrictions of this kind.
05:53There were no inhibitions.
05:54That came when the British decided to impose their own very Victorian moral code on a very unsuspecting but a very large population of their subjects.
06:07So, we are seven and a half decades past the retirement of the British from India.
06:14Dan, you interestingly mentioned the rise of social media and how it is impacting even small towns and villages where young women are able to express a lot of authenticity.
06:25I would be very interested if you explore that a little more because that's something that I've been noticing in all these videos that you see on a regular basis.
06:34These are not necessarily erotic but you can see the request to come out and express from that standpoint.
06:44There's a huge difference between what a lot of young people may confuse with out there behavior for reals.
06:53And what I am seeing because I watch a lot on social media just to understand the change in the country.
06:59The reals that I am referring to are from the smallest villages, whether it's in South India, the Northeast, from Bengal, from Maharashtra, from up north, UP, Bihar.
07:16A lot of the women certainly look underprivileged.
07:21They are shooting these videos by placing their phone cameras at an angle placed on a mud floor.
07:30And quite often they are dancing in front of their own very modest homes, huts in fact.
07:37And they are dressed in their everyday wear.
07:42They probably don't have the resources to dress up for their reels.
07:46But what they are doing is mimicking a lot of popular culture.
07:50The songs that they see, whether it's Bollywood songs or from Bhojpuri cinema, some of those songs.
07:56Or from the South Indian cinema, which is very rich in the way they picturize songs and dances in their movies.
08:04And they are doing it without any inhibition.
08:07Certainly they are putting them up.
08:09They are putting them up because they are looking for those responses and getting them.
08:13But I often wonder and worry how they manage to explain their popularity in a very conservative society to their own,
08:21maybe husbands or the men in their family, brothers, fathers, society at large, sarpanchas.
08:29I don't know how they negotiate that.
08:31You know, the sense of what you say in this day is that the second sexual revolution, intimacy revolution, romance revolution,
08:39whatever you want to call it, will be led by women, especially young women of India.
08:44Is that the right sense?
08:46Absolutely the right sense because they are driving this revolution.
08:51And I'm talking about not just the ladies I spoke about a few minutes ago, but a lot of young professionals in our cities,
08:59a lot of educated young girls who have suddenly found a new kind of way to express their desire.
09:07And also are not constrained by probably what my generation and one generation after mine conforming to family standards or societal standards of what a well brought up young lady should be saying or doing or even sharing so openly across so many social media platforms.
09:32But they're doing exactly that.
09:33And that's making society pretty uncomfortable.
09:37That's certainly making men sit up and think.
09:40So when I was referring to and so on, it was it was not just a metaphor, it was not just symbolic.
09:48It was just saying that the change has happened.
09:51And those women who are still performing their duties should at least be able to be in a position to spice up their own duty, duty bound and dutiful boudoir encounters.
10:05And there are many ways that I've suggested in the book where they can do exactly that.
10:10It's an interesting question you made between duty and sex for a little more than that.
10:15Genuine personal pleasure.
10:18Is that a consciousness that is creeping in among young people now?
10:24Very much so, because in the past they were programmed to believe, especially young women, that their sole job in life was to procreate and produce an heir for the family.
10:37And the joys of that procreation were never shared by anyone, their family elders or their mothers or older sisters or aunts.
10:48They were just sort of thrown into the deep end on the wedding night and they had to sink or swim.
10:54Well, if they had to swim, they had to learn very quickly that what could be a very traumatic night for a very young, untutored bride who is there to also prove that she's a virgin.
11:09Because when you talk about pavitrasa, when you talk about purity, that the bride has to be pure,
11:16there's only one explanation for it is that she has to be a virgin.
11:21And to prove that her hymen is intact, the bride has to bleed and has to establish that to convince the rest of the family that she's come into their family as a very pavitra, chaste woman.
11:36You know, intimacy requires a measure of privacy which in the Indian context may be particularly tough.
11:45Just take Mumbai where you live, couples seeking intimacy have to do it almost as if they are about to commit some heinous crime.
11:53How do you get around this rather practical problem that a lot of Indians face in terms of personal privacy?
12:01It's a very interesting question because there is something very surreptitious about intimacy
12:08and that has directly linked to the lack of physical space.
12:15Despite that, there is a very delicate system in place in joint families also,
12:21not just people who live under shelters on streets, but still produce children.
12:30There is some sort of a code, I'm sure, that allows a couple, a young couple, a few moments of privacy, a few moments of amorous play.
12:43Because I see that families accommodate young couples in ways that are ingenious,
12:52that maybe other societies would find completely baffling as to how you can steal that kind of private time.
13:00But they do manage to do it and that in itself is a small miracle.
13:05I didn't think of that in terms of families affording their young ones a measure of privacy that they need.
13:12Yes, they do.
13:13You write that sensuality has no expiry, which is of course true, but it often gets appended by societal factors.
13:25People past 60, past 70 almost feel awkward, guilty, coy about sleeping physical intimacies.
13:34Do you see that as a problem or do you think it is changing?
13:38No, it is definitely a problem because it's a question of, again, how society brands seniors.
13:46And the thoughts that maybe seniors also have desire is almost obnoxious or it's something that is repulsive,
13:55remoting to a lot of people and within family too.
13:59You're almost condemned for having thoughts which are, according to them, prudent thoughts.
14:05And physical intimacy at a certain age, up to 60s, is considered a not decorous behavior.
14:14But a lot of older people find a great amount of comfort.
14:20They don't have to be panting, heaving and shoving, but intimacy goes well beyond that.
14:26And when I say there's no expiry date for desire, I absolutely mean it.
14:31I mean, desire never dies.
14:34You still have your imagination and your mind is capable of fantasy and of also having all kinds of wonderful flights that can take you to different places, erogenous and otherwise.
14:51It doesn't always have to be copulation.
14:54It can be much more than that.
14:56Very interesting you should mention it because in 1985 there was a sexology conference in Bombay.
15:03And I was talking to June Reinisch, a very well-known sexologist from here, the Kinsey Institute.
15:10And the question that I had asked her was, must copulating couples reach an orgasm?
15:15Because the conference was about orgasm.
15:18And she thought it was remarkable that the question was raised.
15:21What is your view on that?
15:23Orgasm is not necessarily the destination of copulation.
15:27I've said it in the book as well.
15:29It's not the end-all and be-all of copulating couples.
15:34You can be in a lovemaking situation which does not necessarily peak.
15:41And it doesn't have to peak for it to be pleasurable to both parties.
15:46And that's maybe the orgasm itself is so overrated.
15:49It gives so much importance to it.
15:52It's like it's a goal that has to be reached, that has to be achieved.
15:56Or you consider yourself a personal failure for that night at any rate because you have not managed to achieve it.
16:03Or you have not managed to get your partner to achieve it.
16:07Both these fallacies should be thrown right out of the window.
16:11There are many other ways of feeling desirable and sexually aroused and sexually satisfied without necessarily reaching orgasm.
16:21Absolutely.
16:23What has been your experience in terms of how young Indians view sensuality now?
16:28Because there are countries like Japan, for instance, where it's a serious problem of young Japanese having completely given up.
16:35Any notion of sex, romance, lust, all of it.
16:40What's happening in India from that standpoint?
16:43We are heading there surely, but slowly as compared to Japan.
16:49Because Japan is a much smaller country.
16:51India, the young are too restless, too much in a hurry, too preoccupied with themselves.
17:01And the idea of intimacy itself doesn't appeal to the young.
17:07It's spreadsheets over bedsheets.
17:10And they almost have to schedule a time for lovemaking if at all they want to.
17:19And most of them don't seem to want to because their energies are expended elsewhere.
17:26And romance, the question of romance is shrinking.
17:31The whole idea of courtship, the rituals, the beauty, the delicacy of getting to know one another, holding hands.
17:38Even that is something that they don't care about.
17:44Endearments, love poetry, none of it.
17:47And I feel perhaps it's a transitional period.
17:51Maybe they'll come back to it eventually.
17:53But as of now, there is no time whatsoever for any of the frills that accompany, what can I call it?
18:04I can't call it lovemaking because there's very little love involved.
18:07That's not their objective to start with.
18:12So whatever it is that they're doing is very transactional and very mechanical and devoid of any investment of time or their persons.
18:23You know, this is rather ironic because India is unique in the world in terms of thousands of movie songs, particularly Hindi movie songs, articulating intimacies in profound ways.
18:36I'll just cite two examples from the 1958 film Kala Paani.
18:40Majur Sultan Puri writes in one of the Antaraas.
18:43Think about this.
18:46It's a lovely expression about love.
18:54Again, in the Lake Mandil, Shalendra writes,
18:59In the one lit night, there is a festival of desire.
19:04What a lovely little expression.
19:07Despite that, how is it that we are losing that?
19:12Well, the lyrics of today, which are popular lyrics,
19:16they're mainly dance tracks which people can dance to during sangeets when they're really drunk and out of their skulls with excitement
19:24and just having so much alcohol and a good DJ playing for them.
19:30So the lyrics are more rhythmic.
19:32They have very little poetry in any of them.
19:35They don't necessarily even rhyme or make any sense.
19:38And they certainly don't celebrate romance in the way the old, the old lyricists were all poets.
19:45And they wrote beautiful shairis.
19:48And they were fortunate enough to combine that talent with musical directors, music directors,
19:56who had the finesse and the taste to combine classical music with a few modern, maybe, beats to it.
20:08But it wasn't what it is today.
20:11Today, I think the deterioration really started with Eg Do Thien.
20:15Chaar Paanche Saad, as you remember, Javed is very proud of that song.
20:19But a poet of such high caliber as he is, I'm surprised that he's proud of Eg Do Thien, but he is.
20:26These were sort of nonsense lyrics, nonsense poems making no sense.
20:32So today, whether you hear something like a Thamma Thamma, that's what it is.
20:38It's basically music that the lead female star can gyrate to very suggestively
20:47and displacing in the process the legitimate item girl or the band
20:54who used to fulfill that particular role very effectively in earlier cinema.
20:59What's been your experience as somebody who has written this book in terms of people responding to the fact that,
21:08A, you are a woman of some standing, and B, you're of a certain age.
21:13Do people factor those things in? Who is she to advise us?
21:19So far, not at all. The book has been embraced across generations, which has pleased me no end,
21:25because I really wasn't sure what the reception to it would be, because it's not a nudge-nudge-wink-wink kind of a book.
21:34It's not a book that is designed for titillation.
21:37It's designed to encourage conversations around the subjects which, for whatever reason,
21:46everyone sort of feels uncomfortable, almost squeamish about tabling.
21:52So my experience at the LitFest and the interviewers and the reviews has been so far so positive that I'm really very elated.
22:03I didn't expect it at all.
22:05That's wonderful. Do you believe that there is perhaps a need for any government, whether state or federal,
22:13to sort of build this into the health aspect of life?
22:18Sex is part of human health at the end of the day.
22:21Do you think India needs to weave that into its policy?
22:26Excuse me.
22:27Well, we do have extensive sex education curriculum.
22:34In most schools, they have it.
22:36It's almost mandatory at every level.
22:40But it's technical, it's academic, it's explaining about the birds and the bees in a very dry, matter-of-fact way with diagrams.
22:50And it's not encouraging the students to ask questions which may puzzle them or confuse them.
22:55It's not encouraging a classroom or why we should have many more workshops, even for young adults,
23:02and mainly for young men, because what they have imbibed is an awful notion of what they consider macho behavior.
23:13It's like alpha male behavior.
23:15And that is endorsed and indoctrinated from a very young age that you have to conquer a woman.
23:22It's always got to be a conquest of some kind.
23:25And sex is seen in a very combative way by the young men of India.
23:32And I'm sure young men in other cultures as well.
23:34That conversation needs to be changed.
23:37And that conversation can only happen when there are professors, teachers who can guide young minds
23:44through a difficult phase in their own lives where their hormones are on fire and they have no one to turn to.
23:50The advent of social media has meant that young men and women have very easy access to all kinds of pornography.
23:59Now, while pornography does have a purpose to a limited extent, it also twists a lot of minds in terms of what they expect from their partners.
24:09Do you think that's a problem in India?
24:11It's a huge problem and I see it as something that, again, we are swept under the carpet because we don't quite know how to deal with it.
24:20But there's no way one can actually deny access to hardcore pornography given how completely accessible it has become to even very young children.
24:33So the potential of the damage that can inflict on young minds is immense.
24:40At the moment, I don't have a solution.
24:42I don't know how one can possibly rectify the situation.
24:46But one can always address the issue of the problems that it can create at any and every opportunity that public figures find themselves in where their voices will be heard.
25:01And to conclude, how would you like to be courted now as opposed to when you were in your 20s?
25:10Nothing has changed. I'm still a die-hard romantic at heart. I'm still a very passionate woman.
25:17I'm very lucky to be married to a man who's even more passionate than I am and who's far more imaginative too.
25:26And the thought that I'm in my mid-70s, he's in his mid-80s, I don't think that has stopped either of us from expressing our feelings or our desire for intimacy in whichever manner we can now fit that requirement without expressing too much over it.
25:46So nothing has changed. I still would love the flowers. I still love great food. I still love great conversation.
25:55I still appreciate a lot of finesse whenever we are together. And that is timeless courtship. We should never lose track of that.
26:07On that note, many congratulations for this day. I hope it becomes a whopping bestseller and you make a lot of money.
26:14money
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