Indian author Sudhir Kakar's first and best novel, The Ascetic of Desire was based on the life of Vatsyayana, the Indian spiritual guru best known for propounding the treatise known today as the Kamasutra. In fact, the book's full title in its US edition was The Ascetic of Desire: A Novel of the Kama Sutra
(Incidentally, this great ancient work, the Kama Sutra is often mistaken to be merely a sex manual; in fact, Kama is a complex Sanskrit word which has many meanings, and only in one sense means 'pleasure'. The Kama Sutra includes lessons on everyday living, health, fitness, and inevitably, the art of love-making which is after all an integral part of our overall lives. It's really a scientific discourse in healthy lifestyles.)
In the course of narrating incidents from Vatsyayana's life in that fine debut novel, Kakar used the opportunity to explore the psyche of sexuality. He dealt not just with the life of the great sage, but also with the politics of man-woman relationships, analysed folklore and legends, explored the intellectual and physiognomic basis of sexual attraction and behaviour.
In short, he used the story as a means to an end. That end, clearly, was to write a book-length essay on sex and sexuality. He did a wonderful job of it. The Ascetic of Desire was an intellectual delight. It stimulated the mind far more than the gonads. And that's a commendable achievement in an age where stimulating the gonads is the only goal of most writers, film-makers, television channels and advertisers.
It was a didactic novel, comparable to the didactic novels of earlier centuries, when the novel was seen as a medium to tell parables, allegories or moral tales. Except that Kakar's intention was not to offer religious insight, but simply to entertain the intellect instead of the imagination.
To those who had read Kakar's work before, The Ascetic of Desire came as no surprise. After all, Kakar is a psychoanalyst by profession, one of the most public figures in the field here in India. He has authored several successful non-fiction books, taught at several leading universities in India, Europe and the United States. His books have been translated into several languages around the world.
It was only natural that his novel would carry his psychoanalysis a step further: It was almost as if he had placed Vatsyayana on his patient's couch and was rigorously psychoanalysing the man! It was, by and large, successful because sexuality is a complex topic well worth exploring and discussing. And psychoanalysis and sexuality have an inseparable bond, which can be traced back to that father of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud.
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