Sweet nothings

medieval period. Yet,no contemporary Indian book overtly pitched as a collection of erotic writing had

appeared at the bookshelf in many years. Nearly two months after its launch,Leela: An Erotic Play of Verse and Art,compiled by Alka Pande and published by HarperCollins India,was released at Mumbai’s Gallery Art and Soul in November.

“Erotic poetry and art have existed in India for ages. But it was difficult to find it in prose,probably

because it was easier to keep it vague in poetry and art,” says Joshi,who edited Electric Feather. While admitting that vernacular writers have been more adventurous in this respect,he cites inhibition as the main culprit behind erotica’s absence in Indian English writing.

“Inhibition affects creativity as the writers shy away from imagining themselves as their characters,” he adds.

For Electric Feather,Joshi looked for works of fiction which were previously

unpublished. Unlike him,Pande researched and picked up poems — from ancient to contemporary— and arranged them chronologically to show how the use of the erotic expression has changed over the ages. Then,she complemented them by photographs,graphics and paintings.

Still,both of them faced several rejections.

In his introduction Joshi writes about how “one

senior Indian writer,who writes brilliant erotics,disdained to even answer his e-mail while others came with varied and interesting responses to his request to write for the collection. The authors’ reluctance might have also stemmed from the fact that some Indian authors have unwittingly won nominations for the Bad Sex award. Pande’s problem was different in nature. Most of her of the poems,which made it to her collection,were published earlier. Their copyrights emerged as the biggest hurdle for her. That’s one of the primary reasons why she took five years to finish her project.

Though their efforts have marked an interesting

beginning,they haven’t been able to arouse enough interest,yet. Leela,priced at Rs 995,is not available at many bookstores in the city while Electric Feather received mixed reviews. However,the latter deserves plaudits for negating the risk of being termed as “porn” or “bad sex writing”. “What I liked best about the collection,though,is that in most cases,the erotic passages are not there merely because the authors were asked to write erotic stories. The stories are proper stories; you would read them for their own sakes,” says 35-year-old Kunal Goswami about Joshi’s collection.