Kindle Notes & Highlights
Hair is the universal signifier of desire, power, exultation, loss and mourning.
According to Bose, Indian men do not fear becoming women so the threat of the Oedipus complex is not as strong
marrying a husband’s younger brother was quite a widely accepted practice even in England. Henry VIII, father of the Queen of England in Shakespeare’s time, married Katherine of Aragon, his older brother Arthur’s widow.
as potential or actual sex partners’. In fact, so common does niyoga seem to have been that Chapter IX of the Manusmriti lays out in great detail the protocols by which it should be governed:
Kerala, which is the cradle of Indian migration to the Gulf,
Techincally, there is nothing in India’s marriage laws that specifies the two people getting married have to be one man and one woman. The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, for instance, says that the two parties to a marriage have to be Hindus, without specifying their gender.
a tale that the Mahabharata narrates: Svetaketu was a sage whose name was associated with specific sexual techniques (his father Uddalaka had been taught deep lessons of sexual mysticism by his guru, Dhaumya, and he passed those lessons on to his son).
‘Hindu’ traditions, broadly defined, developed eight different kinds of marriages, each of which subjugated women’s desires to various degrees, and many of which reflect the continued and deep-rooted misogyny in India today.
Meghalaya, the youngest daughter rather than the eldest son traditionally inherits the family property.
Kerala, Nair women have been able to walk away at will from a relationship with a man from the 9th century onwards. The woman not only had agency, but she was also allowed to take her pleasure seriously. And she did not need to account for her choice because she had the full sanction of her extended clan.
It is the chemical interaction of chuna and kattha that forms the trademark red colour associated with paan. The betel leaves themselves—which grow in various shades of lighter or darker green—do not contribute to the red colour except as the vehicle for mastication.
No matter what else they might or might not have, every market, every village, every city and town in India and Pakistan will have two shops, often joined together: one selling sweets and the other selling paan.
Paan is prosaic and poetic. It is the least expensive and the most exalted of aphrodisiacs in India.
No matter how one counts, though, the Goddess Parvati does not bear 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
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