Seema Anand, Author and Mythologist, recently joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX Influencer A-List. During the chat, she opened up about her experience of writing her book ‘The Art Of Seduction’, interest in this particular field and much more. Read excerpts:
Speaking about her interest in this particular field and how you came about writing her book ‘The Art Of Seduction’, Seema said, “It actually began with the idea of looking for stories, so I am a storyteller by profession. I believe that stories that we tell define who we are. They actually create our identity. You know the kind of stories that we tell, if you tell stories about how if a man comes home, he is drunk he beats up his wife ,but she is so good that she never says anything to him. “Then you create the identity of a good woman as somebody who will never stand up for herself”, and to me, it’s always been a fascinating subject. As I explored these stories, I realised we never ever tell stories of women’s rights to her own body. That’s always somebody else’s property and i decided to try and see what it is that we had shut down or what is the stories that we had silenced. That led me to the kamashastras. As you know, there are hundreds of kamasutras, not just the one kamasutra. You know what, i had actually thought it was part of my studies. I thought I’ll do a paper on it. I’ll move on. I started this about 18 year ago. All i can tell you is that it is the most fascinating subject that i have ever come across because the Indian Kamashastras are the most exquisite books on erotic passion in the world and they’re so unexplored, untranslated. When i say untranslated, i don’t just mean about translating word to word, i mean about the metaphors, what they actually mentioned and what they talk about. I has become life’s mission now for me to discuss it, but what really draws me to them more and more is the emphasis that they put on a woman’s pleasure. The emphasis that they put on the divinity and the beauty around sexuality, which is so different to the world that we live in right now. It just makes me want to explore it more and see what it is that our ancient wisdom taught us that we see lost in this twilight zone that we live in today.”
When asked how is she using her platform on social media to spread the word on, not only sexual liberation and talking up about your sexuality, but also saying that Indian culture has such a rich understanding of what sexuality is and it can be much more than vulgar, she responded, “You know its just the case , it’s anytime you have to change a story you have to do it one tiny little bit at a time. I think sex education is extremely important. I know that a lot of people in india believe that if you teach sexual education in school then it’s giving kids a license to go up and do things but actually it’s making them aware of what’s going on so that they don’t go up and do things they become more sensible or more careful or more intelligent around sexuality. It’s a very important part of our life to be intelligent and to understand sexuality, but yes coming back to question about how our culture or our background plays into it, what i find in all sex education classes is its very clinical. It’s literally being taught as the anatomy. This is this part is anatomy. This is what happens at penetration. We keep saying that sexuality and intimacy is not necessarily about penetration , that’s one act in that entire world of pleasure out there. To me, i really want to bring back the idea of pleasure as a thing of beauty and refinement, which is what the kamasutra was trying to teach. As thing of refinement, as an thing that intrinsically includes emotion, i think that’s where we are lacking. When we teach sex education or when we talk about sexuality. You know the problem is like you said it’s so taboo that in just trying to break those taboo most of us are just trying to say okay, let’s normalise the conversation. Let’s just get out there and talk about it so that it’s not hush hush and it’s not so pushed under a carpet. Most people are just literally trying to find that first battle and yeah I guess my battle has always been slightly different because as I was telling you earlier I didn’t actually start off by doing this on social media. I’ve been doing this work for so long. I just want to bring back people to the idea that there is beauty and refinement and culture around it. It’s not that one act of penetration that surrounds it, there’s so much more to it.”