Author Jaya Misra has twisted the story of Kama Sutra, the ancient dissertation on love and love-making, in a dramatized way, says team viva
Kama Sutra, the ancient treatise on love and love-making, has always inspired admiration, awe and titillation. But little has been highlighted about how author Vatsyayana was not a mere ascetic but India’s first feminist. That’s what Jaya Misra decided to focus on in her new book Kama Sutra, a novel depicting the life and times of a man who lived 2,000 years ago. It begins with a catastrophic day in the life of Vatsyayana when he sets out on a journey. “He wrote his book at a time when few acknowledged that women had desires and needed to express them as equivocally as men. And it became a part of literature,” says she.
Misra has attempted to transport the present generation to an ancient time with her book and establish a sense of relatability. “Vatsyayana was writing in the post-Vedic period and might have faced a lot of problems while penning the book,” says she. The Kama Sutra is the first fictionalised biography of Vatsyayana and encompasses many aspects, including a tale of broken heart, lyrical violence, ageless love, pure lust, a relationship between mother and son and pain of one-sided love.
The author is a writer, creative director and producer in television who makes films and documentaries. She has also nurtured projects on sports, fashion and fiction. So writing this book while juggling all of this was tough and time-consuming but she carried her draft wherever she went with her team. Misra carried her updated version to Thiruvananathapu-ram and to Manali for the Tubelight shoot as her friend, director Kabir Khan, had invited her to visit the sets.
In search of her story, Misra visited Varanasi as the original Kama Sutra is set in the narrow lanes of the city. “I got the main idea of the story from the ancient temples because the sculptures made on the walls describe an entire era and its ways,” she says. Misra adds that characters in her story were not framed deliberately but evolved naturally as the content developed. “The way an artist paints his canvas with a mixture of colours is the way I write my story. Words flow with the content instead of colour,” she says. It took her almost six months to complete her book. Misra, a mother of two children, had to fit in writing with her regular schedule which made it difficult to finish the story in one go.
She says, “My book Kama Sutra has a very different take on the entire concept. It is about the philosophy and theory of love which needs to be explored,” she adds.
Writer: Team Viva
Courtesy: The Pioneer
OpinionExpress.In
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