Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India
Author : Madhavi Menon
Publisher : Speaking Tiger, Rs 599
This book studies changes in attitudes towards desire in India, and gives readers an alternative version of the nation’s history. It shows how and why a cloud of conservatism hovers over India’s culture, writes SANYA DANG BERI
A confession first: As soon as I heard the title of this book, I was hooked. I wanted to read it and go beyond the short description given about it online. The title itself confounded me — Infinite Variety. It hardly revealed anything. It was too vague for me to understand. But the next few words made it clear that this was a book that was not only different but also a pioneer in a way that very few works manage to be. A History of Desire in India says so much more than what its blurb and book jacket proclaim.
The writer, Madhavi Menon, is a well-known professor of English at Ashoka University. Many years ago, when she was planning to shift base permanently to Delhi, I had met her through another professor. We were on our way to Shiv Nadar University in Greater Noida in the same car — we all wanted to see the campus and the department. I wanted to enroll in the PhD programme while she was looking at teaching options with her partner, Jonathan Gill Harris. I recognised him quickly as I was familiar with his newspaper articles. We spent the whole day together and I found her extremely intellectual and forthright in her opinions. We never met again. I enrolled in the MPhil programme at Delhi University and she found her teaching ground.
Six years later, I’m reviewing her book on a topic that is obviously close to her heart. She often writes about desire and Queer theory. She famously interprets Shakespeare, too, from a ‘queer’ perspective.
The title may not be “all out in the open” but the subtitle gives more clarity with emphasis on three words — history, desire, and India. They tell us about the setting, the theme and the narrative. The narrative historicises and contexualises the history of something extremely abstract and intangible. Desire is something that varies from people to place to societal control.
It is something that one cannot compartmentalise. Desire is fluid; attempting to curb it is like trying to change or stop the natural flow of a river. To restrict it beyond a point is to provoke a rebellion.
A study of ancient Indian culture tells us that India’s attitude towards desire used to be remarkably liberal and tolerant. A good millennium later, how did the nation’s approach to desire and its expression become inhibitedIJ Madhavi Menon has an answer to this. She says that while colonising the nation, the British also colonised its attitudes to match their own Victorian morality and mindset.
So, India inherited this conservatism quite unnaturally. But the nation stuck to it. It used to be the culture that is credited with the making of Kama Sutra, one of the most famous manuals on desire. The famous sculptures of the Khajuraho temples substantiate this argument further. It can be argued that ideas of homosexuality, too, were explored and accepted in this liberal past.
And if all of those arguments are not enough, author Madhavi Menon goes a step further. Full credit to her for connecting mundane, everyday things which usually go unnoticed or are taken for granted, to the history of our nation. She shows how desire is central to the nation’s shared culture. Menon sees “desire” everywhere — in the systems of education, in grammar, in the science of yoga, and in traditions and rituals. She discusses the significance of this “desire” and connects it to the ways of life that now pretend to be divorced from it.
Menon takes the normative and subverts it, she also takes the subversive and justifies its validity and normativity — unlocking the past, present and future of desire in connection with hair, make-up, dating and sexology.
She also takes the not so obvious things — paan, grandparents, temples, gods and their worship, dargahs, fractions, “zero” and the number system, army, parks, law, suicide, celibacy, psychoanalysis and the “devar-bhabhi culture”. Through these, she explains the ritualistic perspective and undertones of desire inherent in them.
The cover is very interesting and attractive — a version of the illustrations in Kama Sutra. The cover photo is sourced from a wall painting in the Durbar Hall of the Samode Palace Hotel in Jaipur. The blurb is apt — inviting the readers for a ‘guided tour’ into the horizons of desire that the explores.
This would have to be one of the most interesting titles in the genres of non-fiction and history. It has dollops of popular culture references and very intelligently relates the “regular” with some of the most intriguing ideas from the schools of Philosophy as well as Psychology.
Menon travels the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent for her research. She includes records of personal and public histories to give us extraordinary theories. The connections that she makes between the most paradoxical of things tend to leave the reader amazed.
She explores the binaries and fissures in the cultural canopy of our nation’s history. For example, long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality. When shaved off and presented in a temple, it becomes a sacred offering. She points out the chinks in the armours of the self-proclaimed preservers of culture. She also reminds one of the Indian role models of transgressive love — Radha and Krishna. They disregard marital fidelity, but their story does not end tragically.
All in all, this book is a collection of historical anecdotes that would be quite interesting to read even in isolation. Menon not only unearths all these relevant bits and pieces from our culture, but also meticulously organises and arranges them into a book that reminds us of the complexities of the many cultures of India in all their glory. When the reader is done with each chapter, he/she would feel a little closer to the Indian nation and a little richer in the sense of ideas and attitudes.
The reviewer is a teacher by profession and a writer by passion
