Sunday, February 24, 2002		Literature

BOOK EXTRACT
Above the joys of attachment

IN Radha, Indian women found a symbol for the vicarious release of their repressed personalities. Radha’s intense yearning for Krishna echoed their own subconscious frustrations. Her uninhibited pursuit of physical fulfilment with him mirrored their own libidinal stirrings. The secretive, illicit and adulterous nature of her affair with Krishna provided a particularly apt framework for them to identify with. Radha, the furtive rebel, determined to clandestinely break the stranglehold of social norms and customs, became an image they could readily internalise.

If Radha was the inspiration, Krishna was the object of the Indian woman’s fantasy. Unlike other gods in the Hindu pantheon, Krishna’s personality had a softness to it that made it conspicuously responsive to the longings and desires of women. As a child, his impish adorability tugged at the maternal instincts of the women of Braj. As an adolescent, his aggressive behaviour with its transparent sexual overtones was secretly understood by them. As a lover, he was prepared to overcome his own initial scruples to respond with equal passion to their overtures. When he danced the rasa he took care to perpetuate the illusion that he was available exclusively for each one of them. In lovemaking, he was both untiring and accomplished. Above all, he was human, treating women not just as sex objects, but suffering like them in separation and longing. In his company, they could relax the code of conduct imposed by an overwhelmingly male-dominated society.

They would assume a stance of familiarity, calling him a thief a liar, cheat and so on — something they could never do with their husbands. Krishna allowed women to play out the fantasy of being in control, of being able to bend the will of men to their commands. In the Gitagovinda, Radha compelled Krishna to repent and, when they made love, Radha took the man’s position of being on top. After they had made love, she commanded him to plait her hair and attend to her toiletries. Mana or the pride between lovers became, with Krishna, a two-way street. If he on occasion had to be cajoled out of a sulk, he too was prepared to make the effort to persuade his beloved to relent. the Rasikapriya, Keshav Das’s (1555-1671) celebrated treatise on erotica, describes how Krishna would arrange to send to an angry Radha flowers ‘longing to become fragrant by a touch of her breasts’, or an ivory necklace, yearning to fulfil its destiny by going on pilgrimage to her bosom, ‘the seat of holiness’ (in M.S. Randhawa’s Kangra Paintings on Love).

Krishna had himself initiated and encouraged the love of the gopis for him. His affair with Radha was one in which he was completely and equally involved. Why then was his departure from Vrindavan so final and irrevocable? Certainly such a course of action would not be attributed to whimsy or coincidence. It could appear that his sojourn in Vrindavan, and his conscious and definitive departure from it, was meant to convey the one integrated message: Kaama has validity, but not exclusive validity; sex is a window to the divine, but not the only window: the physical is joyous, but so can the non—physical be.

This Hindu view of life was always informed by two parallel themes: one emphasised the legitimacy of desire, the other stressed the joys of transcending such desire. Shiva gambolled in sexual play with Parvati for such an extended period that the gods themselves began to worry; but the same Shiva remained for years immersed in the most sublime meditation, totally oblivious to the senses. The dialectics of mainstream Hinduism were not either-or. It was not that one path was right, and the other wrong. Both were valid, for the essential premise was that there was more than one avenue to experience the bliss of the infinite. Mythology became a tool to correct the exclusivity of one approach. When Shiva, angry at being disturbed in his meditation, destroyed Kaamadeva, the God of Love, he was forced to recreate him. The empirical observation of life reinforced such an eclectic outlook. It was apparent that more than one strand combined to produce the final weave of existence, and more than one colour the complete picture of reality. In the unfolding life of an individual there was a plurality of phases, each with a dominant pursuit and emotion, valid for that particular phase, but not valid in the same manner for all of them. In the Hindu scheme of things, the ideal life had four stages (asramas): brahmacharya, the period of discipline, dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge; grahastya, the period of the householder and worldly pursuits; vanaprastha, the period of preparing oneself to withdraw from the worldly senses; and sanyasa, the period of the hermit, withdrawn from the material world. This was an attempt to construct the rhythm of life, taking into account its inevitable evolutionary mutations. The mosaic of life was multifaceted, its murals of many levels. Spring and autumn were beautiful, but each gave way to summer and winter, which had their own compensations. the day could be resplendent, but it was inevitably followed by night, and if the night was unhappy, it would as surely be followed by dawn. Orgasms, however ecstatic, could not be stretched forever. The sexual urge, however legitimate, could not be sustained in permanence. The body, however beautiful, could not remain untainted by the vicissitudes of age. And desire and passion, however intense, could not forever retain the same efficacy of expression and fulfilment.

Krishna left Vrindavan to demonstrate this verity. In doing so he demonstrated too the essential nature of his own being. His involvement in Vrindavan was but an enactment of his leela. He was a participant in the rasa and in the escapades on the banks of the Yamuna with Radha and the gopis, but this participation was inherently transcendent. He was involved but it did not involve him. He was a yogi, above the joys of attachment and the sorrows of separation. Vrindavan may have been possessed by him, but he could never be possessed by Vrindavan. His rasa leelas may have proceeded for nights on end, but at another level, he was the eternal celibate, untainted by his actions, and above its consequences.