A distinguished psychoanalyst who is celebrated for both his craft and his writing, Sudhir Kakar recently published his new novel The Devil Take Love. Kakar has written over 25 books, many of which are based on historical characters in a fictionalised setting. In The Devil Take Love, he chronicles the travails of the Sanskrit poet, Bhartrihari, known for his grammatical works and aphoristic poetry incorporating three principal themes: shringara, vairagya and niti—love, dispassion and morality. Drawn from these elements, Bhartrihari’s poems reflect the critical tension between desire and renunciation. Through his book, Kakar weaves Bhatrihari’s poems into an explorative commentary on the nature of eros and highlights the complex negotiation of desire in the interior landscapes of the human mind. In an email interview with Nikhil Pandhi, an intern at The Caravan, Kakar talked about the book, his love for poetry and his take on recent political phenomena such as the ban on pornography by the central government.
Nikhil Pandhi: In the latter half of your book, Bhartrihari declares, “For so many years, my body has trudged on under the burden of desire that has been my torture and my god.”
Sudhir Kakar: Desire is a primal force, not only in human beings but in all creation. Our ancestors, especially in the classical period of which we are so proud, not only acknowledged but celebrated it. For instance, the sixth century Brihatsamhita says: “The whole universe, from Brahman to the smallest worm, is based on the union of the male and female. Why then should we feel ashamed of it, when even Lord Shiva was forced to take four faces on account of his greed to have a look at a maiden.”
Desire is not simply the physical underpinning of love, its aim is the keen pleasure of sexual intercourse and orgasm. Burning torments of unrequited or unconsummated desire, sharp stabs of jealousy, possessive violence are as much a part of desire’s terrain as are the unconscious illusions that the fulfillment of desire will rid the mind of noxious hates, will release me from the prison of a separate body, make me transcend the boundaries of my body and self in union with another. The vision Kama sends is not only of the body’s ultimate pleasure but also of its transcendence.
NP: Bhartrihari is fundamentally seeking love distilled from sexual passion and erotic disenchantment. How would you characterise this love? Would you agree that it is the most primal emotion or experience of the human psychosocial life?
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