A Sanskrit touch to sweet nothings

This was a book I was determined to read at random. On the first page I turned to, there was a poem headlined ‘Is It Love?’

Serendipitous indeed, for you see, the book is titled ‘How to Love in Sanskrit’. Necessary too, is it not, to first know if it is love or merely something like it before going on to explore how the ‘language of the gods’ dealt with the primordial emotion of us mortals.

The poem I stumbled upon defines love like this: “If you aren’t staying up nights/if you aren’t even a teeny bit jealous/if you don’t get upset at anything they do/if you don’t sulk even a bit/if you don’t give each other/sweet compliments/there’s no love there.”

Uh-oh. Now that’s a formidable list! And what fun to confront a lover with such a sweetly worded admonition. Indeed, if there is a single theme running through this wonderfully entertaining collection of poems, it is ‘fun’ — not an adjective we use with Sanskrit nowadays, a language sadly appropriated by militant know-alls and confined to ritualistic religiosity, a once-tempestuous river constricted by rigid notions of propriety and sanctimony. Amidst these pages, Sanskrit flies free. She is cheeky, sophisticated, sometimes ingenuous, other times sagacious but never on a high horse, the perch she is often forced to sit upon. 

The aforementioned (translated) poem is from ‘Seven Hundred Gahas’, speculated to be a work from 100 CE. The ‘Gaha Sattasai’, a collection of poems on love in Maharashtri Prakrit, is just one among the 80-odd original works that translators and Sanskrit scholars Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh have sourced to serve readers of this tastefully produced edition a delicious smorgasbord of verses, complaints, abuses, sweet-nothings, savoury insults, pop psychology tidbits and beauteous compliments — all with love and about love. The poems featured in this book are not only from Sanskrit but also from Pali, Prakrit and Apabrahmsha, all of which are known to have contributed greatly to many languages spoken in India today.

In a longish introduction and a ‘tour’ of the translator’s workshop, the translators make it clear that they have taken the liberty to “refit Sanskrit verses for modern English.” They also explain that often the poetic metre does not have any translation as such, and even if it does, it is doubtful if the speakers of English will perceive its rhythms at all, and hence, they have chosen to focus on meaning. Mostly, this decision works well for the book; it is only the rare poem that does not sit comfortably on the English tongue. Sometimes, it works particularly well. Like this gem from ‘Seven Hundred Aryas’ by Govardhana written in 1100 CE: “She would startle/at the very mention of a snake./Now the same Parvati/pats the snake on Shiva’s arm/into her cushion as she sleeps./What will we not do for love?”

Incidentally, the title of this verse, ‘The Things We Do For Love’, may remind some readers of another lover in another land — the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister of Game of Thrones(HBO-2011) repeating the very same line ad-nauseam throughout the eight seasons of the immensely popular political fantasy series.

This is another thing the book does — makes you recall the many ways in which you have pitched headlong into love, both in real life and in fiction, and the many shades of desire you may have experienced — yes, including 50 (or perhaps more) grey hues. A minor grouse is the authors have chosen to translate the titles of the original Sanskrit works as well — this ends up confusing the reader somewhat, especially if he knows a smattering of Sanskrit and has heard of (or read) the original works. The anecdotal footnotes are a pleasure to browse through — one only wishes they were a bit more elaborate. 

That said, this is a book to cherish and dip into now and then, especially if you are feeling blue. I did and ended up with a fit of giggles, courtesy of a certain Damodaragupta from Kashmir who wrote this in 800 CE: “If a woman laughs at a man/with a wink to her friend/and a high-five/may the ground kindly grant him/a hole to be swallowed up by.”