Be it the Indian or western love sagas - Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranjha, Devdas-Paro, Sheereen-Farhad, Soni-Mahiwal, Romeo-Juliet, Paris-Helen - the hero and the heroine are fair, slim and tall. The writer proudly remarks that the word of her unrivaled beauty was spread throughout the entire region; And there was no one to be found as gallant and able-bodied as him.
I wonder if it is a coincidence that this description holds true for all the love heroes and heroines, or can black, fat, short, frail or ugly people not fall in deep love? Why are their love stories not worth a mention?
I wonder if it is a coincidence that this description holds true for all the love heroes and heroines, or can black, fat, short, frail or ugly people not fall in deep love? Why are their love stories not worth a mention?
To take your argument further ...this love always happen between a man and a woman....I think whatever is written in the past 100 years only celebrate popular love....the love that you talked about existed between same sex couples too but it was never talked or written about as love stories.
ReplyDeleteHowever these loves are known as friendships such as Krishna and Arjun....Krishna and Sudama ....just to look at differently we find interesting Brokeback Mountains in our history.
A lot of these famous ballads were already popular tales of their times before they were codified. It is interesting though, if you read some of these texts, they also have casteist overtones sparsely distributed in them. Moreover, a few of them also have an anti-feminine slant to them e.g. the tale of Mirza and Sahiba, where Sahiba is lamented by Mirza for breaking his arrows to save her brothers from this sharpshooter.
ReplyDeleteAlso none of them happen to be of different religion or social class... Considering that the hero commands all the action while the heroine is locked up, in all the stories, all of them are kind of anti-feminine.
ReplyDelete#anonymous (ha!), Krishna and Arjun, or Sudama, are anyways mythological tales, written carefully enough to be taken as a lesson for the society; why would the writer be so careless as to involve homosexuality which is very much anti-hindu religion. So I wonder if it is much use reading between the lines of such a biased text... but yes, there must have been many more such stories which for sure have been omitted or suppressed...
Hi Gulfam what is this ha....It is a weak defence and an insult....(you grudge that popular lovers are always beautiful and perfect figures but you scoff at if I use the same device to bring out other stories which are seen through the straight eyes only in specific hetronormative ways.
ReplyDeleteDoes it matter if the popular figures were real or mythological? The whole idea of literature is to read between the lines. i think good literature does not say everything, and what is not said is more important and this very important element sets it apart from telephone directory.
read them again even the modern over sentimental versions of krishna and sudama popular in jagarns goes beyond the realms of asexual friednships. just remove the genders and you will see it.
Hinduism was never anti sexuality ..it was the Mughals and later the Victorian card holders (Islam and Christianity are )who brought homophobia to India and make it criminal through law
Hindu scriptures contain many surprising examples of diversity in both sex and gender. Medieval texts narrate how the God Ayyappa was born of intercourse between the God Shiva and Vishnu when the latter temporarily took a female form. A number of fourteenth-century texts in Sanskrit and Bengali (including the Krittivasa Ramayana, a devotional text still extremely popular today) narrate how hero-king Bhagiratha, who brought the sacred river Ganga from heaven to earth, was miraculously born to and raised by two co-widows, who made love together with divine blessing. These texts explain his name Bhagiratha from the word bhaga (vulva) because he was born of two vulvas.
Another sacred text, the fourth-century Kama Sutra, emphasizes pleasure as the aim of intercourse. It categorizes men who desire other men as a “third nature,” further subdivides them into masculine and feminine types, and describes their lives and occupations (such as flower sellers, masseurs and hairdressers). It provides a detailed description of oral sex between men, and also refers to long-term unions between men. Hindu medical texts dating from the first century C.E. provide taxonomies of gender and sexual variations, including same-sex desire.
Most modern Hindus are ignorant of this rich history, and believe the popular myth that homosexuality was imported into India either from medieval West Asia or from modern Euro-America. It is symptomatic of this ignorance that the democratic and secular Indian government has retained the British law criminalizing sodomy.
Keep writing and keep thinking Gulfam
that was well-researched, thanks for bringing it to light for me and other blog readers...
Deleteconcerning the ha! don't be so paranoid. that was not for the comment, rather for the 'anyonymous', when I know well who the 'anyonymouss' is, right from reading any single line of any comment...
wow ! equally interesting are the blog post and the enlightening comments.
DeleteGulfam...can you see? people are reading ! Keep posting more often !
:)