Lust has always found itself on the wrong side of the human value system, but the irony is that no matter how many social, ethical, and religious sanctions were erected against it, lust has held its surreptitious sway over man. In the Christian tradition, lust along with pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, and gluttony formed the seven deadly sins. These sins weren’t distinctly listed in the bible in the order it has come to be known. It was Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, who codified the sins in their increasing order of severity. They were meant to serve as guardrails for the devoted so they don’t stray, even inadvertently, into the path of sin. To counteract the seven deadly sins, Christian theologians cleverly prescribed the seven virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Medieval writers and artists did their bit by giving body, shape, imagination, and color to the sins in their writings. Dante’s work “The Divine Comedy”, for instance, is nothing but a beautifully imagined three-part poem about the circles of hell, each circle a hotbed of sin, and the final redemption of man in the circle of heaven as the seat of virtues. In modern times, Lust has found its way into virtually every piece of art, especially cinema. David Finch’s iconic 1995 movie “Seven”, portrays an unimaginable punishment for the victim representing lust. Lawrence Sanders, the novelist, wrote seven best-selling novels, dealing with each of the seven sins. His novel on lust is the most gruesome and chilling of the lot. Picasso’s paintings are known for their striking eroticism, which supposedly provokes lust. Among all the seven sins, “lust” has had a peculiar fascination and relevance in human life, because it is often used and misused in the context of love. And love itself is as evasive and mysterious an emotion as man has ever known. What is the line that divides love from lust, is still open to debate. It must be said, at this point, that lust is used in other contexts as well. For instance, we say someone lusts for power, possessions, etc. But even here, the word lusty has sexual undertones.
We can however recognize lust because we are brought up with specific notions of what lust is. Lust has for us, an animalistic connotation. To lust after something, has come to mean that we go after a person or a thing in an atavistic, reckless manner, like animals, as we like to say. While love is considered soft, protective, compassionate, altruistic, and committed, lust, on the other hand, is the antithesis of it: unbounded, carnivorous, irresponsible, limitless, selfish, violent, faithless, and above all hurtful. But it is difficult to apply the distinction in most cases. A boy talking to a girl and holding each other’s hand in a park is considered love, if they are found passionately kissing each other behind a tree, we smirk and interpret it as lust. We consider it love if a couple can have candlelight dinners and whispering conversation, but call it lust if those conversations are animal grunts and cries. We call it love if the man only looks at the woman in front of him and nobody else but quickly reframe it as lust if his eyes wander and size up other opportunities. Was Anna Karenina’s ostracism and eventual suicide in Tolstoy’s epic due to lust or love? Even in today’s emancipated world where sexual attitudes are more liberal than they used to be, there is still a stigma to lust. We may be pardoned for committing a crime in love, but to do so in lust is unpardonable and irreconcilable.
But there is some solace for us here. Even great philosophers have succumbed to the lure of lust. There is a story about Alexander and Aristotle, probably apocryphal, recounted by a French poet in the thirteenth century. The story is about how Alexander was lectured by his tutor, Aristotle, to not spend time and energy on Phyllis, a beautiful courtesan. Alexander heeded his master’s advice but informed Phyllis that he is leaving her because of Aristotle’s advice. The young lady was as smart as she was alluring. She arrived at Aristotle’s residence and began singing, dancing, and erotically enticing Aristotle. The master’s resolve gradually wore down and he grabbed Phyllis through the window and vowed his passion to her. Phyllis obliged but on one condition, before the master could parley with her, she wanted to saddle Aristotle ( like a horse) and ride him around the Garden, which the master did, without knowing that Phyllis had presciently invited Alexander to witness the humiliation of his teacher who taught against Lust. The puzzled Alexander accosted Aristotle: ” Master, how can this be”, to which the philosopher replied ” You see son, if lust can do this even to a man of wisdom like me, what chance will youngsters like you have in the world if you don’t control it? A masterful ploy by the philosopher to get out of an awkward situation, but there you have it, more than two thousand years ago, lust inflamed the heart of one of the finest Western philosophers. Closer home, in the Mahabaratha, Sage Vishwamitra broke his meditative exercise for beautiful apsaras ( Angels) not once, but twice: Menaka and Rambha. Commentators on the epic urge their readers to focus on Vishwamitra’s subsequent control of lustful desires and the attainment of his goals, but the fact remains, that even he, the most resolute of men could let the ball slip before he took control of it. Lust is such a powerful force.
Having written this much, we can now ask, what can be a working definition of Lust. It is obvious there is no clear way of defining it, but putting in the perspective of carnal longings, Lust can be taken, in the words of the philosopher Simon Blackburn ” as an enthusiastic desire that infuses the body, for sexual activity and pleasures for its own sake”. As always Shakespeare had a say in most human affairs, and what he said usually makes sense. In the first lines of Sonnet 139, he defines lust as: “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame, is lust in action…” Right on the mark, as always. Lust is followed by a sense of shame and is definitely an expense of energy. The entire Sonnet 139 is about lust, but the bard captured the essence of the matter in the first two lines.
Lust Stories – 2 (LS2) on Netflix is an anthology of stories around the subject of carnal lust and its manifestations. Each story is written and directed by a renowned filmmaker. When Lust Stories ( the first part) came out in 2018, it caused some flutter because of its bold treatment of taboo subjects. And LS2 continues that exploration. OTTs have given filmmakers to experiment and be bold. Though censorship and right-wing fundamentalism are wrapping their arms around the content produced by Streaming services, there is a lot of scope to tell tales out of the ordinary. Of the four segments in LS2, the first two are the best. “Made for each other”, directed by R. Balki is a peach of story. Neena Gupta, the veteran actor, plays the role of a grandma who believes that good lustful sex is the foundation of a good, stable, and fulfilling marriage. When her granddaughter ( Veda, played by Mrinal Thakur) is about to get engaged to her childhood friend, and the parents partying over it, she abruptly asks the girl and the boy, if they are good in bed for each other. Everyone around is embarrassed, shocked, and uncomfortable. But the grandma remains firm in her conviction that a couple can remain married for practical purposes of living their lives, but the joy of communion, the intimacy one feels for the other, and the constant renewal of the relationship in love cannot happen if their sex lives are dry and only happened far in between. Daadi educates Veda on how cool her own relationship with her late husband was. She still keeps a packet of old condoms in her cupboard as a remembrance of those times. The young girl is taken aback by the modernity of her Grandma’s attitude, and both she and her fiancee heed her grandma’s wise voice and start exploring their physical compatibility with each other. When Veda comes home after a night’s rendezvous, Daadi asks her ” Did you experience Mount Fuji?”, in other words, an eruption of lust or passion. Veda cannot control her embarrassment and bursts out laughing. The segment ends with Veda experiencing Mount Fuji before the wedding and the grandma happily decorating the bedroom for the married couple. Veda’s father, caught between the blasphemous utterances of his mother, also finds a renewal in his relationship with his wife. Healthy sex is shown to be the lubricant for a long and happy relationship.
The second story directed by talented Konkana Sen is perhaps the most daring and poignant of the four segments. Ishita ( played by the brilliant Tillotama Shome) is an affluent, single woman who works as an interior designer. She is lonely, has frequent migraines, and is dry within. She employs a maid Seema ( played by the Marathi actor Amrutha Subhash) who more or less manages Ishita’s home. One day when Ishita returns home at 3 PM due to a severe attack of migraine, she hears sexual grunts and groans from her bedroom. Instead of confronting the intruders, she looks in the mirror and sees Seema on her bed having passionate sex with her Husband. A voyeuristic weakness, a lust that she is unable to consummate herself, takes over Ishita. She derives pleasure from watching her maid participating in unabashed sex in her own bedroom. This becomes a habit, until one day, her peeping act is found out. A confrontation ensues, followed by a reconciliation. The segment ends with the clock showing 3 PM. The cycle of lust and pleasure continues. In thirty-odd minutes, Konkana Sen captures not only the nuances of sexual inadequacy and the power of lust but also the role social hierarchies play in the playing out of sexual preferences.
The last two episodes have big names in them: Tamanna Bhatia, Vijay Sharma, and Kajol, but fail to make a deep impression. At least, I didn’t find them particularly interesting. The stories did not showcase the central theme of the anthology in the way it should have. They are alright but not as gripping and thought-provoking as the first two. Looking at the anthology as a whole, then, one wonders if lust is always a weakness, or if could it be a transformative force, a surging pool of energy that could be channeled for deeper fulfillment. In its raw form, it is clear that excessive lust is destructive because it does befuddle the mind to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise do. Like a tsunami, Lust for something can suck in the whole personality and drive it toward the fulfillment of just one goal – pleasure at any cost. Is pleasure the same as happiness? With questions like this, once again, we land ourselves in a philosophical arena. And philosophers would say No. Pleasure is momentary, and happiness is constant, they would argue. Whether or not, one appreciates anthologies like LS2, they certainly provoke questions, if we have the courage to face them. What is lust? what is love? what is pleasure? and what is happiness? I challenge anyone who can provide definite answers to these questions. But the problem is we use these words lightly and frequently in our daily conversations as if we know where we stand. Socrates was right, 2500 years ago, and our own Indian sages were right in the Upanishads when they said words are inadequate descriptions of life. We assign arbitrary definitions to certain experiences, like casting a net to catch space, and then swear by those definitions. Perhaps lust and love are two parts of the same coin, one cannot have one without the other. Perhaps there is nothing like “pure” love, except in our idealism. Words have such a stranglehold on how we experience life, and we like to compartmentalize what we experience in neat little buckets because it is comfortable to do so. Where lust ends and love begins, it is difficult to say, just as it is difficult to say where an electron ends and a nucleus begins. But we know when we see it, feel it, and experiment with it. That is the only test. Perhaps!!