Infinite Variety

by Madhavi Menon

  Eating paan is not for the faint-hearted—it is for the erotically and adventurously inclined. Do not be put off by Manucci’s account of his first encounter with paan, which echoes Forster’s description of the first effects that eating paan had on him: ‘Having taken some betel leaves, my head swam to such an extent that I feared I was dying. It caused me to fall down, I lost my colour and endured agonies, but she poured into my mouth a little salt, and brought me to my senses. The lady assured me that everyone who ate it for the first time felt the same effects.’ After going through that trial by fire, paan becomes addictive, with or without the tobacco. A 13th-century short poem by the great Amir Khusro wryly notes: ‘Last night my paan-seller was up to his tricks / as he slowly prepared paan leaves in his shop. / As he gave the people in his shop their leaves, / in return they surrendered to him their lives.’ An erotically charged set of lyrics from the 1966 Hindi film Teesri Kasam describes the heroine’s lover as a paan-eating saiyan (lover)—an extended song sequence details the kimaam-breath, the red lips and the intoxicated pleasures induced by eating paan as marks of the true lover. No paan without a lover, and no lover without a paan: such is the story of paan in the history of desire in India.

  Eat, faint, enjoy, and repeat.

  19

  DATING

  Wherever I find love, I will accept it.

  —Quote attributed to M.F. Husain

  This could well have been a chapter about dating. Until recently, the romantic Western idea of ‘going on a date’ was unheard of in the subcontinent of arranged marriages. There was little to no expectation that partners will go on dates and get to know each other before deciding to spend their lives together. But now, with the Americanization of the world, going on a ‘date’ has become the thing to do for lovers in India. International dating apps like Tinder are all the rage, and many urban young people with smartphones are on it. These dating apps blur the line between a sexual liaison and marriage, which is exciting for some and shocking for others. Where once swans and pigeons and sahelis (female friends) and eunuch harem guards were the messengers of love, now we have the internet and the smartphone as the organizer of dates.

  But despite being understood as symbols of sexual freedom—spontaneous, irreverent, romantic—dates abide by a more rigid set of conventions. Contrary to our commonplace understanding of romance, there is very little about dating that is spontaneous and uncalculated. Instead, it follows the dictates of the fixed calendar dates of the work week. Thus ‘dates’ are usually scheduled outside working hours—in the evenings or on weekends. Romantic dates abide carefully by calendar dates in their planning and execution, and calendrical dates sustain the rhythm of romantic dates.

  This is a chapter about that more literal understanding of ‘dating’ in which calendars divide time into days and weeks and months and years in order to regulate time in a productive and standardized manner. Even more, it is about the rich overlap between calendrical dates and visual representations of desire, a phenomenon that takes on unique shape in the Indian subcontinent, where dates accompanied by prominent visual designs hang in every household, shop and office in the form of a calendar.

  The calendar widely followed around the world is the solar, Gregorian calendar, which remains unchanging from year to year (except minutely for the leap year). This is the gold standard of dating and provides the template for most economic, and many romantic and sexual, transactions. It is set in its ways and cannot be changed, no matter what the exigencies of a particular date might be. With the Gregorian calendar, we cannot suddenly wish that March  24, for example, could be a Saturday rather than a Monday.

  But historically, such flexible dating has been possible with other calendars around the world, and certainly with various Indian calendars—Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian—that are based on the lunar or lunisolar cycle and change from month to month and year to year. Dates vary annually, and festivals fall on different days each year. This means that every Indian has access to multiple forms of dating depending on the lunar, lunisolar and solar calendars. Such access exists in combinations rather than singly: many Indians will have two birthdays, for instance, one according to the solar calendar and the other according to the lunar calendar. Two dates for the ‘same’ day. Of these, the lunar and lunisolar calendars, governed by the moon, are the ones that keep changing. Because of this changeability, the lunar is linked etymologically to the lunatic, which brings lunar dating closer to the Sufi qalandars (ecstatic dervishes in the grip of desire) than the Gregorian calendars.

  Can we draw a correlation between cultures that have multiple modes of calendrical dating and multiple modes of desire? Can we say that the same cultures have multiple calendars and desires? Might a more elastic, changeable set of calendrical ‘dates’ suggest also a more flexible attitude to desire? Is there a correlation between a single mode of calendrical dating and a single way of doing desire? Does a standardization of calendar dates also control desire in a more rigid manner? It is impossible to answer these questions definitively. In an India governed by multiple calendars, people’s attitude to dating too is multiple.

  The mass production of calendars in India started only under the British in the 19th and 20th centuries. Colonial markets had allowed objects to reach far and wide. Catering to this expanded market, calendars used artwork as advertisements for products and shops. The dates on these calendars are most often in keeping with the fixed Gregorian system of dating. But the artwork tells more fluid tales of desire. Calendar art often provides a visual battle between the standardization of the sun and the messiness of the moon, between the strictness and moodiness of dates.

  The most recognizable form of this calendar art was pioneered by Raja Ravi Varma, the painter-cum-businessman, who set up the first lithographic press outside Bombay in 1894 to mass produce his artwork. Indeed, paintings and sketches by famous Indian artists—from Mario Miranda to M.F. Husain (whose quote provides the epigraph to this chapter)—continue to be used on many sets of calendars.

  Ravi Varma’s paintings were mostly of gods and goddesses from Hindu epics, but there were also paintings of stand-alone women. He was praised both for producing Indian erotic masterpieces and high European naturalistic art. With mass printing, this high art also became ‘low’ and was adapted to calendars that were produced in the tens of thousands for distribution across regions, classes and religions. These calendars sometimes listed their dates in three different formats—the Gregorian, the Hijri and one or other regional version of a Hindu calendar. Prior to Independence in 1947, firms advertising on these calendars list offices in Lahore and Karachi as well as Delhi and Bombay. Pre-Independence calendars use several European models, for example, to sell beedis (Figure 1). Post-Independence calendars move to Indian models and the socialist principles of the newly-independent State. Many of the women models personify Nehruvian ideals of agriculture and innovation, while continuing the Ravi Varma tradition of being painted as sexual beings (Figure 2).

  Figure 1 (All calendar art images courtesy of the Priya Paul Collection)

  Figure 2

  This use of human models expands later to include film stars and politicians. But by far the largest number of images on calendars, both before and after Independence, are those of gods and goddesses (Figures 3 and 4). Not only did this calendrical investment bring together business and religion, but also its use of gods and goddesses tells us a lot about the visual histories of desire in India. Reproduced below are calendars that I have slotted into two categories, each of which tells us something about a history of desire in India. The first deals primarily with goddesses, and the second with gods who are also sometimes goddesses.

  I—BABY BOOM

  One of the most striking sets of images in calendar art is the use of goddesses to promote baby products. Both the Saraswati and Lakshmi figures above are taken from famous Raja Ravi Varma paintings, and are enlisted on these calendars to sell Vinolia Baby Soap and Glaxo baby product
s respectively. ‘Glaxo Builds Bonnie Babies’ announces the 1930 advertisement for the company’s famous dried milk. And it probably did, given what an immensely successful business Glaxo-Smith-Kline continues to be. But the only discordant note in these otherwise striking advertisements is the oddity of having a Hindu goddess endorse baby products. Because the thing about Hindu goddesses is that they specifically do not produce babies. Goddesses are goddesses by virtue of the fact that they are not involved in the messy business of reproduction.

  Figure 3

  Figure 4

  Take Shiva and Parvati, for example, widely considered in all their avatars to be the First Couple among the gods. Shiva and Parvati have four children, but none of them is produced biologically by Parvati. The eldest child, Kartikeya, is produced when Shiva’s semen is incubated by the River Ganga. The second son, Ganesha, is produced by a bored Parvati out of the earth that she fashions into the shape of a boy. (As the legend goes, Shiva does not recognize his ‘son’, and lops off his head when Ganesha—who too does not recognize his ‘father’—prevents Shiva’s entry into his home. Berated by Parvati for this act of filial violence, Shiva then cuts off an elephant’s head to breathe life into his decapitated ‘son’ and create the icon we now recognize as Ganesha.) Of their two daughters, Ashokasundari was created by Parvati out of a tree, and Manasa was formed when Shiva’s semen touched a statue carved by Kadru, mother of the snakes.

  So Kartikeya is Shiva’s child but not Parvati’s; Ganesha is Parvati’s creation but not Shiva’s; Ashokasundari is Parvati’s heir but not Shiva’s, while Manasa is Shiva’s offspring but not Parvati’s. No matter how one counts, though, the Goddess Parvati does not bear any children.

  Which makes the connection forged by calendar artists between goddesses and children an actual forgery, a distillation of non-reproductive desires into reproductive ones. Popular nomenclature takes this one step further, attaching the prefix of ‘ma’—mother—to various avatars of Parvati, like Durga and Kali, none of whom actually has any children.

  In fact, across the ancient Hindu texts, it is commonplace that gods and goddesses will not produce children. As M. Marglin notes in The Divine Consort, ‘In this world, the world of samskara, pleasure is brief and one begets children, whereas in the divine play of Krishna there is continuous (nitya) pleasure and no children. The gopis are not impregnated...Krishna’s erotic dalliance with the gopis has no ulterior purpose or consequence. It exists for itself, in itself.’ Many Hindu gods have an untold number of sexual encounters to their credit, but their liaisons do not result in either pregnancy or biological birth. None of the Hindu goddesses gives birth to a child. Even though in some cases they do, like the Glaxo ad, ‘build’ one.

  II—DIVINE DESIRES

  Shiva is repeatedly represented by calendar artists as a sensual man rather than as a celibate god. And even as he is sometimes flanked by one or more child, it is his sensuality that seems most fascinating for calendar art. It is easy to see why this might be the case considering that the Shiva lingam—understood commonly as Shiva’s phallus, emblematizing his potential—stands in for the God himself. The word lingam derives from the Sanskrit for mark or symbol (this is the same word that defines the various genders in Sanskrit) and is usually understood to describe gendered identity both linguistically and physiologically. However, the lingam is also related in the Shiva Purana to the Sanskrit word for a cosmic pillar (sthamba). This might suggest the shape of the lingam and can refer metaphorically not only to the vast divine powers endowed in Shiva, but also to the tantric practice of ascension up a series of rigorous meditations.

  But the renowned 14th-century Telugu poet, Srinatha, makes it clear that the primary association of Shiva’s lingam is with the God’s phallus. In ‘Śiva in the Forest of Pines’, he provides a somewhat humorous description of how the lingam came to be Shiva’s chosen symbol of devotion. The poem recounts the story of Shiva, in which the god leaves his father-in-law’s house after being berated for his rude and sensual ways. He wanders into the Forest of Pines, which is inhabited by ascetic Brahmins and their beautiful wives, and proceeds to seduce every one of the women during their husbands’ absence. When the Brahmins find out what has been happening behind their backs, they gang up against Shiva and attack him:

  Now, while eight-formed Śiva was playing these rowdy games, the heads of houses were manhandling him; so he threw off his loincloth and made his linga—long as the trunk of Airāvata, Indra’s elephant—stand up erect, and with that powerful weapon hit those Brahmins on the head, nape, earlobes, faces, noses, bruising them...He extended his linga up to the sky.

  When Brahma sees that Shiva’s lingam is threatening to engulf the world, he begs the God:

  ‘Withdraw it before the cosmos cracks,

  Relax it before the path of stars is disturbed.

  Make it soft, lest the Seven Winds are blocked,

  Let go of your power, lest the ends of space crumble.

  Pull it back, stop this defiance, let it become supple,

  leave it, your ever-so lovable linga.’

  Śhiva listened well, laughed a wild laugh, and said,

  so that all the world could hear:

  ‘You sages, gods, demons,

  my incomparable linga is worthy of worship

  from now on.

  I will happily bring into my company

  whoever worships the linga

  with a good heart...’

  And thus it is that Shiva devotees worship his cosmic form as it is manifested in the phallic lingam. In Figure 5, Nandi’s hump too is suggestively shaped as a phallus, perhaps to describe the extent of his devotion to Shiva. And in Figure 6, a devotee drapes herself seductively across the lingam itself.

  Figure 5

  Figure 6

  But as much as it extols Shiva’s phallic sensuality, calendar art also highlights the difference in attitude between various other gods to the question of erotic desire. These differences are most stark between Rama and Krishna, even though both are avatars of Vishnu. If you look at Rama—for instance, in Figure 7—then what is immediately obvious is his marital chastity rather than his sensual desires. In fact, even though Rama is inevitably painted/printed alongside Sita, Rama and Sita are never cavorting by themselves—there is always Lakshmana and often Hanuman by their side. These images tend to be extremely hierarchical, with Hanuman bowing at the feet of a seated Rama who is flanked on both sides by the standing Sita and Lakshmana. There is not a whisper of desire that emanates from this image other than a desire not to desire; to have order in all aspects of life; to endorse a feudal-patriarchal view of the world in which the man is in front, with a wife behind, and a servant below.

  What is interesting, though, about the figures of Rama and Lakshmana on this calendar is how fragile they are: slender, slim-waisted, hairless. Quite unlike our current depictions of a muscular Rama after whom vigilante armies spewing violence are named. As Kajri Jain points out in Gods in the Bazaar, there were specific iconographic restrictions in place against showing the musculature in a god’s body. She quotes calendar artist Indra Sharma’s instructions against the use of musculature: ‘Now the body is very strong, but we will not show the anatomy. For god’s body, the description is of a gentle, beautiful (sukomal) body... There won’t be any muscles, we people avoid muscles.’ Rama’s body tends to be soft and graceful, at least till the 1990s, after which it was replaced by the ‘muscular’ body of the icon of the Ayodhya movement.

  Figure 7

  Figure 8

  Figure 9

  Compare this slender and constrained image of Rama and Sita with the plump and voluptuous abandon that is visible in calendar art depicting Krishna and Radha—see Figures 8 and 9.

  There is a mutuality of desire in these images that is premised on the breaking of boundaries. After all, Krishna and Radha are not husband and wife, nor do they uphold the social traditions of being upper-caste rulers. There are no rules; Krishna even advertises �
�Shiva Pen House’ (Figure 9). Unlike Rama and Sita’s iconography, which is geared towards maintaining the status quo in matters of desire, Radha and Krishna spread out with abandon. The sense of desire captured by these images reflects also the followers of Rama and Krishna respectively. Over the last century, the most vocal and visible followers of Rama have tended to become increasingly militant, patriarchal and casteist, in keeping with the Rama legend of a man who suspects his pregnant wife’s sexual purity and consigns her to the flames in order to test it. Followers of Krishna, meanwhile, not only retain a sense of abandon, but actively cross boundaries in their expressions of desire. And this has been the case historically. In fact, as Sudhir Kakar points out in Tales of Love, Sex, and Danger, ‘...in the bhakti cults, where the worshipper must create an erotic relationship with Krishna, the transcendence of boundaries of gender becomes imperative for the male devotee, who endeavours to become a woman in relation to the Lord. In his case, the violation of the biblical injunction “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garments” is far from being an “abomination unto the Lord thy God”. In bhakti Krishna not only demands such a willing reversal from his male worshipers but is himself the compelling exemplar.’

  The worship of Radha is central to the cult of Krishna. So much so, that desiring Krishna while taking on the form of Radha becomes the fundamental duty of all Krishna devotees. And concomitantly, Krishna himself is often represented iconographically in sakhivesh—dressed as one of Radha’s female companions, longing for himself. As Kajri Jain notes, ‘Pushtimarg priests identifying with Radha reported intense sexual experiences before the image of Krishna. An account of the Sakhibhava sect of Mathura and Brindavan, written behind an eighteenth-century painting of one of its members, describes how male devotees wore red loin cloths every month to simulate menstruation, and after this period was over: “In the manner of married women, anxious to be physically united with their husbands...they take to themselves... a painting of Shri Krishna, and stretch themselves, raising both their legs, utter “ahs” and “ohs”, adopt woman-like coy manners, and cry aloud: “Ah, Lalji, I die! Oh Lalji, I die’!”’