Matters of heart and heat

Book Title: a pleasant kind of heavy and other erotic stories

Author: Aranyani


Struggling with one's sexuality seems never ending. It starts at the advent of the discovery of differences between the bodies of the opposite sexes. The teens pass by in one hazy convoluted mass of misunderstanding and misconceptions. The blur doesn't clear as you step into womanhood or manhood or some unknown sphere of maturity that we are yet to discover or fathom. But the only thing that remains as constant and unrelenting is the 'Big Brother'esque watch on our sexual behaviour and the almost obsessive need to keep it, and all matters incidental thereto, under warps.

So the first time I laid eyes on the red book titled 'a pleasant kind of heavy and other erotic stories' in a not-so-formidable font, the skeptic in me rose an eyebrow while the rest of me (non carnal included) squealed in delight.

Nine short stories. Two hundred and ten pages of sweet succulent freedom. And one very smart woman behind it.

‘Aranyani’, and the woman sheathed under the mysticism of this mythological caricature has commandeered respect and how. Even though I would not say that I wasn’t mildly skeptical about the irony of the writer using a pseudonym while apparently breaking away the chains of social, as well as sexual bondage, all such skepticism flew right out of the Victorian window faster than a Concorde taking flight. At the expense of sounding like a teenage girl gushing about her latest Japanese Anime Boy crush, I adored the book.

The book elicits a range of emotions and responses. And here, I’m going to deal with it as it came to me.

Love is a term better understood (and revered) in our communities. Although not easily acceptable when that love is directed to a person that does not conform to our caste/ economic status/ religion/ sexual orientation expectations, but that is not what the entire purpose of the book is, thankfully. The point it triggers in your brains is an acute realization of the lack of love of our bodies, an inevitable result of our conditioning. How many times, in all honestly, are we told to be specifically proud of our breasts? Or our unthreaded eyebrows? Clamp it all down in an uncomfortable bra, shave it, wax it, thread it, bleach it, tan it and then remind yourself you are a modern independent woman while carrying the placard promoting equality.

And that’s exactly where this book scores. The hypocrisy is laid bare in a scorching account of love, lust, sexuality, sensuality and a celebration of all of the aforementioned.

The exquisite pain and longing that a young widow feels as she belittles herself for not sleeping naked next to her dying husband, that one last time in the cold sterile hospital ward. The conditioning of her childhood and teenage hood that eventually led to her following in the prudish steps of her difficult unflinching mother and the ultimate finale of the story resulting in her dreaming of a last sexual encounter with her now dead husband in “Triptych  “. Beautiful, tragic and tangibly cold. It did not leave me for a long time.

Balancing out the sombre tone, the almost comical ‘A pleasant kind of heavy’ traces the journey of a young Indian woman, pregnant with her first child in the faraway States, as she struggles with her ever burgeoning appetite, sexual and otherwise, while her tired overworked husband follows her whimsical lifestyle.

The book moves at a languorous pace but it gives the feeling of being encased in a summer of discovery where the perception of erotica itself undergoes transformation. No man, woman or fuck is portrayed to be perfect. While love was being made by two homosexual men in a self-discovery experiment, a young girl encounters her first brush with the opposite sex in a literary exhibition while playing out her part as Thisbe in Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe. The classical love story is beautifully juxtaposed against the forbidden feelings that young Indian ‘chaste, homely’ girls are warned against as is the case of the protagonist of the story.

Eventually the journey is all about fulfillment.

Where it stems from and where it takes you to are immaterial. And the book does just that. It starts from an unfamiliar premise, delving into multitudinous psychology, emotions and geography and as you finally head towards the end, you realize that it arose as a culmination of the daily oppression of a free young Indian soul, not unlike you and me.

Not a modern classic. But a definite piece in my book shelf. 

Publishers: Aleph Book Company