by Seema Anand
The back was dotted with little dabs of sandalwood. Not rubbed over, just dotted in a series of loops because this created a trail for someone to follow. Like a game of treasure hunt, you could control where your lover began and finished the trail—often allowing it to end at a little hidden dimple or mole—the perfect prize for the lover’s patience!
Perfumed breath was very important because the idea of kissing someone with bad breath was repulsive. Betel leaves, mango shoots, camphor, cloves etc. were used as mouth fresheners. Scented twigs were used for brushing the teeth every morning but before lovemaking men were advised to chew on lemon bark to freshen their mouth once again. But aside from this the lovers of the Kama Sutra were also advised to smoke specially scented cigarettes to perfume the mouth. Turning the myth of the after-sex cigarette on its head, the Kama Sutra suggests it should be smoked before lovemaking. The cigarette was to be rolled with fresh sandalwood, khus and oysters—a combination, we are told, that was a favourite of Kamadeva himself. Why a cigarette? The fragrant smoke would scent not just the mouth but the throat as well because the kisses and embraces recommended by the Kama Sutra were meant to go far deeper!
Perfume was a way of life. Clothes, bedrooms, bath water—everything was perfumed. The Kama Sutra even advises lovers to keep the distilled scents of cardamom and citrus by the bed at night in case the beloved fouled up the air by passing wind! There was no place for bad odours in the world of seduction.
Men were massaged vigorously with different perfumed oils just before their bath, an exercise that could take up to two hours—it was not just about scenting the body but also creating the right mood that would be arousing for his partner. After the bath, a little bit of extra scent was reapplied to specific parts of the body that were prone to more sweat—the emphasis being on ‘little bit’ because men of class only used small quantities of perfume. The amount of perfume you used was the difference in social status. Men of lower breeding used large quantities of scent, which caused them to reek of it.
Men also wore flower garlands of different types, all with their own fragrances, to check the smell of sweat on their brow and neck. The flowers were chosen according to the season, the time of day and the occasion. If he was going to a crowded mela where there was a chance of meeting the lover, the garland of choice would be of champa flowers—a strong, far-reaching fragrance—because this would attract the attention of the beloved as he walked past. For less crowded gatherings, he would wear a garland of jasmine which had a lighter scent. But ‘for moments of amorous dalliance garlands of yellow amaranth flowers are recommended (even though they do not have any specific scent) since they do not fall during caressing, kissing or hugging.’*
At the time of the Kama Sutra the perfumes in fashion were musk, saffron, sandalwood, camphor, aloe, lemon, lavender, champa, juhi, kulaka, anjana and gorochana, the most popular of these being musk, amber, sandalwood and saffron because they smelled like the most intimate parts of a woman’s body. (Obviously not such a bizarre idea since modern perfumers will tell you some of the most expensive perfumes on the shelves today are designed to smell like the vulva!)
Both men and women wore perfume and so both were expected to have a complete knowledge of this art—how to mix different fragrances, where on the body to use them, what was their effect on the senses etc.—because the right perfume applied to the precise spot could make your lover’s brain do flip-flops that all the acrobatics in the world could not achieve.
The making and selling of perfume was a flourishing trade and aromatic resins were stored in the royal treasury like priceless gems. The art of perfuming was so important that Kautilya (the fourth-century forerunner to Machiavelli) devotes an entire chapter to it in his famous treatise, the Arthashastra.
My Advice
Perfume is like instant sexiness in a bottle. It has all the excitement of the unpredictable. When you mix two colours you know what you will get, when you mix two smells you have no idea what could happen. Use it to flirt, to seduce, to please your lover, to treat your own senses, to feel good!
If you are not a ‘perfume person’, now is the time to change that.
Perfume has an amazingly uplifting effect on your happy hormones. Good smells make you feel good!
Try the natural stuff. There are many expensive and fabulous perfume houses but good quality attar is on another stratosphere. Natural oils are unspeakably romantic and silken and, to my mind, nothing manmade even comes close. Think about it—on the one hand you have the extract of crushed rose petals and on the other, there is civet (which is extracted from the butt of a rodent and is the base for the most expensive perfumes in the market today). Which story would you rather whisper?
Try musk attar. It has a heavy, sensuous tone.
Get khus. Khus, as I mentioned, is the smell of fresh rain as it falls on scorching hot soil. It originates in the little town of Kanauj in north India and is still made in exactly the same way as it was 3,000 years ago. Shallow ditches are dug and the earth in them is allowed to dry and harden and bake under the burning sun. Then the monsoons come and the rain water gradually soaks into the mud and takes on a whole new identity. The perfumers of Kanauj, with a magic that only they understand, distil this fragrance of rain-soaked mud and bottle it.
Don’t just use it on the head, apply it to the skin, soak your pillow. with it It will transport you to a land of fantasy like nothing else can.
If natural oils are not practical for you, find yourself as good a quality perfume as you can afford. Don’t buy cheap perfumes—they don’t do the job.
Don’t wear a perfume just because ‘your friend uses it’—perfumes smell different on different people. Experiment with what suits you.
Perfume should never be used in overly large quantities but it has to be enough to have an impact.
If you are using perfume (as opposed to natural oils), I would not recommend mixing the fragrances on your skin—it doesn’t have the same effect. But you can play around with them in different ways.
Perfume your handbag—get a perfume just for your handbag and spray the inside so that every time you open it you get an expected whiff. It can really lift your mood.
Perfume your feet—this one is for both men and women. Spray the inside of your shoes with your favourite fragrance. You will be surprised at the result. The feet have the most number of nerve endings and they react very positively to perfume.
For the next special occasion try a game of perfume treasure hunt with your lover. Create perfume trails on your body and see where it leads.
*Alain Danielou (trans), The Complete Kama Sutra, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Lovers’ Quarrels
Nothing kills a relationship like the tedium of unremitting sweetness. All lovers need the adrenaline boost of a good old fight now and then to keep their love alive and healthy.
The author of the Kama Sutra seems to have felt so very strongly about the benefits of lovers’ quarrels—in strengthening relationships and increasing passion—that he ends his section on foreplay and seduction with a chapter on lovers’ quarrels.
All lovers must quarrel and fight regularly in order to keep the relationship fresh and exciting. Quarrels are not just things that happen, they must happen! It is as much a technique of romance as kissing and embracing.
The lovers’ quarrel of the Kama Sutra was an out and out gloves-off fight and the making up—which was even more important—had to be done with pure, egoless, no-holds-barred love. But, Vatsyayan warns, lovers’ quarrels only work for couples who share a very strong bond of love and trust, for those who understand that a quarrel is just a temporary bit of madness and that it has to be made up with even more love than the anger with which the fight started in the first place.
If a couple didn’t share such a bond then the quarrel could lead to further damage in the relationship.
Because the quarrels had a very specific purpose—to keep the relationship fresh and exciting and to incre
ase the love between the couple—they had to be done in a very specific way and by following several rules, which Vatsyayan explains.
So what does the book of love say about lovers’ quarrels?
According to the rules, the man starts the fight—by mentioning the name of another woman either during or just after sex. (According to the traditions of ancient Sanskrit poetry, quarrels arose from the actions of the man—he showed interest in some other woman or he was away too long or he seemed disinterested. This gave the woman the right to be angry and it became the man’s role to appease her.)
Upon hearing the name of another woman, the beloved, who has been lying in his arms, enveloped in the warm glow of loving intimacy, is rudely jerked out of her mellowness. Vatsyayan says she is not to take this lying down—she is not a doormat or a martyr, she is a cherished lover—and she must react with all the security and entitlement of a cherished lover. She is to have a loud and unabashed tantrum.
The Kama Sutra says she must lash out at her lover in any and every way that she wishes, kicking him, screaming at him, breaking things, tearing off her jewellery and flinging it etc. She is the injured party and he needs to know it.
She can do pretty much anything she wants—except—and here’s a very important rule—she cannot run out of the house. She can threaten to leave, she can run as far as the door, she can even stand at the doorframe and sulk—but she cannot run out of the house.
Why?
The Kama Sutra explains.
First, if she were to run out of the house and he did not follow her immediately she would feel humiliated and it would not be easy for her to return with her dignity intact.
Secondly—and more importantly—as part of the making up, the man is supposed to fall at her feet, and it was forbidden for a man to fall at a woman’s feet outdoors. This law was outlined by the sage Dattaka who, according to legend, created the rules of etiquette for social and sexual manners to be followed by lovers and courtesans.
Dattaka explains that the most popular position for lovemaking was the ‘shulachitaka’—the woman lying flat on her back with one foot on her lover’s head and the other on his shoulder. This would cause the alta* from beneath her feet to rub off on the man’s forehead, and it seems that no matter how hard you scrubbed, the red marks had a tendency to not completely wash off. Somehow a little streak would always remain in the hair like a tell-tale sign (much like the twentieth-century ‘lipstick on the collar’). If you saw a man with red marks on his forehead, you knew he was just returning from a visit to his lover.
The ‘red marks on the forehead’ became a metaphor for a man who had just had sex. It didn’t have to be said—you knew! Ancient and medieval poets have used the red mark to describe the hurt silence (or tantrum) of many a heartbroken wife and the confusion of the husband who has been expecting a warm welcome and cannot understand her reaction.
So, a man placing her feet at his head was considered a very intimate act. A man only placed a woman’s feet on his head when they made love. Since a lover’s quarrel had to be made up with the man falling at the woman’s feet—or in other words, with ‘make up sex’—the quarrel could not be taken outdoors.
Having started the quarrel, the man must now make it up to her, with all the love and patience in the world, no matter how much time or effort it takes. He cannot get impatient or complain, he cannot say things like ‘I’ve already apologized’ or ‘How many times are you going to repeat this’ or ‘Oh, for god’s sake’ etc. He needs to be abjectly repentant and cajole her back to good humour in an utterly loving and unquestioning manner.
The Kama Sutra says the man must throw himself at his lover’s feet (this act of appeasement is known as ‘pada patana’) Because if he can do this—if he can be completely loving and repentant—at the end of this the beloved will feel so loved and cherished that she will want to return his love tenfold.
My Advice
Personally, I feel the chapter on lovers’ quarrels is one of the soundest pieces of advice in the Kama Sutra. It is very relevant for our times.
Let us forget for a moment the grand tantrums, kicking and screaming. Just remember—fights happen and making up is essential. Vatsyayan has hit the nail on the head when he says that if the man can be intelligent enough to understand how to make up—without ego or pride, just putting his lady first—he will be blessed with the undying love and support of his partner and consequently have a life of blissful peace and harmony.
Fights are healthy now and again, but only so long as you understand that this is simply a difference of opinion, and they have to be made up in the end. It is so easy to fall into a rut and get buried under everyday matters and responsibilities: you talk less and less, problems simmer under the surface and become resentments. Nothing kills a relationship like the dreariness of deep-set monotony.
The occasional fight is a great way to clear the air and break that monotony.
However, the Kama Sutra is spot on when it says that this method of ‘romancing’ is for couples who share a deep love and trust. Because at the peak of the fight, when you are really furious, it is this love and trust that will bring you back to each other.
The making up has to be done with such complete openness, unfettered by the ego, that it leads you to fall in love with each other all over again.
Loud, all-out arguments are better than silent, sulky fights—they finish far quicker.
Don’t storm out—stay and get it out of your system. And then look at your partner and remind yourself that you care for each other and have done so for a very long time and that this is just temporary insanity.
In telling us how to fight, in actually allocating roles, Vatsyayan once again proves that he is truly a master of the human psyche.
Other than the indisputable fact that we are of the same species, men and women are completely different physically, mentally and emotionally. We fight about different aspects of the same things and therefore the emotions and the focus of the fight is entirely different. This was obvious to a man living in the third century ce but still manages to elude the twenty-first century man by a mile.
Guys—if she is upset, don’t tell her she’s being silly or nagging or unreasonable. Accept that you’ve upset her—even if you are unable to understand why your actions could have had this effect—you need to be mature enough to know that you are partly responsible. Dump your ego and decide that it is you who will do the making up—and do it with complete and unconditional love. The returns will be beyond your expectations—focus on that.
Ladies—everyone expresses their emotions differently. If what he is doing to make up is not what you would have done in his place, do not hold that against him. Learn to read the signs of his love—the signs are there—appreciate them and love him back for it.
Do not burn any bridges. Lovers should quarrel, they should have the freedom to fight it out in whichever way they wish, but they should also have the maturity to understand the importance of boundaries.
*Alta was a red paste with which all women traditionally adorned the soles of their feet—it was de rigueur. No woman would have ever considered setting out to have sex with unadorned feet.
Secret Language of Lovers
The Kama Sutra says that there are no words to express the delights of love, lovers and lovemaking. How do you convey what those few stolen moments meant to you, describe the passion of the night you spent together or put in words the exquisite anticipation of the meeting to come? Lovers’ messages have to stretch across the domain of every fantasy and still create room for more.
For instance, a common trope in ancient Indian literature and the arts was the ‘girdle of jingling bells’. It was not the norm for a woman to be on top during sex. For her to be on top, she had to be an exceptionally good lover—that is, she had to be good enough to bring herself and her partner to orgasm by only moving her hips. Not the torso, just the hips! And so, the really accomplished courtesans would wear a girdle of ghungr
oos around their upper waist and make sure that during sex none of the bells made a sound!
This jingling girdle became a symbol of erotic fantasy, a mood that was difficult to put into words—the sensation of the woman moving on top of her lover, the sight of her swinging breasts, the beads of sweat on her forehead and her earrings, grazing across her cheeks as she leaned forward to kiss her lover’s lips; how would one describe the curtain of her hair as it fell across the lover’s face—it was the ‘jingling girdle’ that said it all. If the man sent a jingling girdle as a gift to his mistress, she knew exactly what promises the evening held. If the poet said that she had put on her girdle, it was implicit that the woman had taken her position on top.
An expert knowledge of the secret love codes and symbols was one of the sixty-four essential skills of the Kama Sutra and indispensable to one’s success in society and in love. Vatsyayan begins his chapter on the love codes with a grim warning to men who underestimate the importance of understanding these codes (as opposed to women, who clearly get their significance). He says a man can be rich, good looking and skilled in all the other sixty-three arts of love, but if he has no knowledge of the secret love codes then the woman of his dreams will dump him in the same way that one discards a wilted garland of flowers—in the garbage, without a second thought. If it became known that a man had been dumped by his lover, he would be destroyed socially. The Kama Sutra was not kidding when it said that one had to put aside everything else and ‘study’ the code with intensity and concentration because this code was like no other in history.
For one, this was a time before paper and pencil, so this whole code was not even entirely made up of words—it was a series of objects, gestures and symbols. For another, it was not just a private exchange between two individuals; this code had to serve every lover across the land in every conceivable situation. It needed a massive vocabulary that could cover every emotion and situation and it had to be nuanced enough to craft the message with all the delicacy and detail of a love letter, but without the use of words.
