For as long as I can remember I had always wanted to be a writer. Therefore, when I first stumbled upon Freud’s statement, “all romantic literature is the outcome of sexual repression,” I was at a loss. I wasn’t prepared to accept how true the statement was. During this denial phase, I regressed back to find out why the persona of a writer appealed to me, while writing as a profession wasn’t something that was positively propagated in my family.

I had written my first poem in protest of my mother’s reluctance to accept my sexuality. I was in my early teens, volatile with hormones that lulled my conscience. I was molten with passion. I wanted to be touched, to be fondled, to be kissed, to be gathered in an arm. Of whom, it was secondary. My mother smelled this longing in me and somewhat artlessly tried to terrorise me with threats of rejection. 

I remember feeling threatened. So, instead of looking for a man, I sought the comfort of my diary and wrote the poem:

I love my mother, but I am not her lover

Discontent with my love, she seeks for her husband 

But when I seek for a lover, 

She admonishes me I am not old enough 

As if the younger ones have no right to seek the love they crave for

Freud was right. At least, in regards to my first poem. But how could he be as audacious to throw a blanket over “all romantic literature”?

Not long ago, I was a part of BBC documentary crew that filmed the lives of the Rautes, the aboriginal nomads of Western Nepal. During our month long stay, we found out that they didn’t have any literature nor a concept of religion. Despite our attempts at understanding them from close quarters, they retained their elusiveness. Kamala, who was the protagonist of the documentary, was a widow. Her husband had passed away three years ago, leaving her with their only daughter, who was five years old. To our utter bewilderment, she was often seen breastfeeding a child, who couldn’t be more than two years. During our interview, she told us the child belonged to her younger sister, who for some reason or the other couldn’t lactate the child. A little surprised, we bought her story nevertheless until one sultry afternoon, where we had followed her younger brother Kalyan to the forest, who went foraging for ferns. We asked Kalyan about his sister and how she was managing her family financially. Kalyan confided coolly that her sister had impregnated herself two years ago to receive extra one thousand rupees stipend from the Government as per their decision to grant thousand rupees stipend to each Raute. So, how did it work? Kalyan told us when Kamala expressed her desire to impregnate herself, the Mukhiya, or the leader of the clan, asked the most virile young boy of the community to sleep with her. But once she was pregnant, he wasn’t obliged to play the role of a father. The community was content to accept copulation without further implication of familial bonding. After this incident, we gradually learned how libertine and generous they were about sex. Sex was merely an impulse that needed to be satiated. Or a means to reproduce. If a man willed so, he wasn’t obliged to look after the woman even after impregnating her. 

Freud argues our civilizstion is built on the foundation of sexual repression. He further states our art and our literature, particularly romantic literature, have merely fermented from sexual deprivation or repression. For a moment, I thought of some of my favourite romantic books—An Equal Music, The End of The Affair, Unbearable Lightness of Being, Narendra Dai, Sirish Ko Phool and then I thought of other enduring tales of romance—Romeo and Juliet, Laila and Majnun or Shiri and Farhad. Much to my surprise, indeed, for whatever the narrative be, at the heart of them is the story of unrequited love or the failure of attainment of the beloved or the consequent demystification on the attainment of love. 

Especially when it comes to stories of Romeo and Juliet or Laila Majnu it is curious how the same theme occurs repeatedly across different cultures and communities. What do we have in common among all three stories? The lovers never actually have an opportunity to be together, to explore each other in prolonged intimacy. And in this deprivation, the lover becomes mystified. He projects all romantic qualities on his beloved, which he wishes for. And beloved, for her part, is never intimate enough to shatter the projection. Therefore, all lovers are romantic and all husbands sarcastic. Either most of them are overtly romantic about their partners or if the process of demystification has started they are sarcastic, if not indifferent, about the spouses.  

But among the Rautes, I noticed a healthier friendship between a husband and a wife. Could it be true that the Rautes were not as much disenchanted by their partners because their libertine sexual ways spared them the acute romantic projection and hence the consequent demystification? Did the Rautes fail to feel need for literature or any folklore akin to the prototype of the story of Romeo and Juliet because the attainment of a sexual partner was so easy and guilt-free that they wouldn’t have to resort to writing about love? Why do we write about love, at all?

During my nine-year-old experience of living together with a man, I have noticed that exclusive or monogamous commitment to a single person is not possible. Even if we might not go ahead and commit adultery, it’s rare, if not impossible that many times one revels on the secret thought of committing it. But at the same time, our foundation of morality is based on sexual conduct, particularly on the person’s capability to stick to one partner for as long as possible. And therefore, if a man wanted to appear civilised or morally justified, he must repress his sexual impulse or find backdoors to release them. But even if he releases his impulses secretly, he might escape the societal condemnation but alas, there is no way to escape the sense of guilt, which is the secret prison the society has created inside a man. Hence, for a modern civilised man there is no way to enjoy this sexuality without compromising a little with societal support-system, which is cruelly 

intolerant of anyone, who intends to express his sexuality naturally. 

Commenting on Malinowski’s Trobriand Island ethnography, Reich had once light-heartedly commented, “…Genital doesn’t understand any “gamy” your society expects of you. It just seeks to be satiated.” I am increasingly convinced that our literature is an outcome of this conflict between the pleasure-seeking quest of genital and the unreasonable commitment of fidelity the civilisation expects of one. In between the threat of rejection and deprivation, we create an imaginary escape where we try to justify or vicariously live our repressed desires or reinforce the myth of Happily Ever After in a monogamous union, which can be true but only in fictions.  

The names of the Raute brother and sister have been changed for the sake of their privacy