Page 55 - Tehelka Issue 13 - July 15, 2018
P. 55
interview
teresting nuggets of a history of
desire in India.
The book covers a time-
frame extending from the an-
cient sculptures of Khajuraho
to displays of sexuality in modern-day
“bhabhis”. Tell our readers about what
has changed in the landscape of sexu-
ality through the centuries, and what
remains constant.
Desire changes and moves all the
time — it always overflows the bounds,
and that is the only principle it follows.
This is why writing the definitive his-
tory of desire is an impossibility. But
if we take seriously this principle of
excess, then it becomes possible to
think of phenomena separated by
several centuries in the course of
the same book. The sculptures of
Khajuraho are excessive inasmuch
as they do not conduce to sexual
identities or even to reproductive
sex. Bhabhis are excessive since they
are fantasised in scenarios that do
not conduce to what their roles are
socially expected to be. And to be re-
alistic, the phenomenon of bhabhis
as vectors of desire is hardly a mod-
ern one but dates back at least to the
Mahabharata and the principle of ni-
yoga, or delegation, in which one man
is “allowed” to have sex with his broth-
er’s wife in order to beget children.
Tracing these multiple trajectories of
desire makes, quite literally, for the
strangest bedfellows!
ring B uddhism and J ain - Section 377 is pending before the
ism, encourage a productive Constitution bench of the Supreme
relation to desire. And Ayyappan is no Court. Do you see the Court over-
exception to this general rule. What ruling its previous decision in the
makes Ayyappan’s shrine even more near future?
interesting is that access to it is barred I certainly hope so. The Supreme
to women between the ages of 12 and Court’s 2013 order overruling the
50. This has, quite rightly, invited com- 2009 Delhi High Court judgment that
ments of sexism against the keepers of decriminalised homosexuality was
the shrine. But it also allows us to think a sad document for many of us — not
about the erotic arrangement of an all- least because the judg ement seemed
male company of worshippers who are to be based on several false dichoto-
specifically asked to abstain from having mies about what is and is not “Indian.”
sex with women for 40 days before The judges seemed to be acting on
undertaking the pilgrimage to the the assumption that same-sex de-
shrine. For me, these are the crev- sire is a foreign import and as such,
ices in which nestle the most in- should not even be considered by
Tehelka / 15 july 2018 55 www.Tehelka.com
54-56 Q&A Neha Kirpal.indd 3 03/07/18 4:07 PM
