Zinda Rehti Hai Mohabbatein! (Love shall endure)
What Does Prohibition of Desire Do?
Introduction
I do not know whether it was because of the nervousness and excitement in my mind or cold breeze of February, but I was shivering while waiting for him. Incessantly looking at my watch, I was frantically walking from left to right, before he arrived. We hugged and then he showed me the way to his apartment, introducing me to an unexplored space and helping me see through the taboos that clouded my desires. Raqeeb is an academic cum photographer who, in his own words, “captures the intricacies of male sexuality”. I reached out to him hoping to engage with my fantasy of being photographed in the nude. We talked, had chai (tea) and gradually moved to the shoot which went on for a few hours. The warmth and comfort he provided took over my nervousness and allowed me to shoot without clothes despite the cold. A few days later, when I saw my photos on his page, I felt that I had finally created a physical reality of what had always been on my mind.
Some desires, such as mine to be photographed naked, are not socially sanctioned; they are tabooed. Taboo is the reason why I can easily have an ice cream when I wish to but not do a photoshoot like this without it seeming like a big decision. Like taboo, different kinds of prohibitions are placed to inhibit people from acting on them. In that sense, prohibitions appear to be a strong force; oftentimes violent too. However, they are equally futile. In their attempt to suppress desire from one space, they only create new spaces for desire to emerge and flourish. Thus, prohibition of desire leads to nothing, apart from creating new spaces for desires. This is not my claim, it has been presented by writers, poets, lyricists, directors and even social scientists innumerable times.
This essay is an attempt to bring together what has already been conveyed by several thinkers through different mediums, and thereafter raise the possibilities of engaging with desire, using my experience with Raqeeb as a reference point. I will first draw on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s essay ‘Castes in India’ to illustrate the gory extent to which attempts to prohibit desire can be made, and how those attempts can occupy an institutionalized position. I will then synthesize my analyses of four texts — Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Lihaaf’, Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘The Blouse’, Vijay Dan Detha’s ‘The Dilemma’ and a song from Aditya Chopra’s film ‘Mohabbatein’ — to substantiate my claim about the futility of different kinds of prohibitions. Finally, I will link the literature to the real (if one must assume that there is no link between the two already) by illustrating how Raqeeb’s work is doing precisely what is happening in the chosen texts — prohibitions being rendered futile.
Prohibitions of Desire and Violence
In an attempt to theorize the caste system in India, in his essay ‘Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development’ (1916), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar establishes a direct link between prohibition and violence — that of institutionalized nature and extreme kind. He presents that through the problems of ‘surplus man’ and ‘surplus woman’.
Ambedkar argues that castes originated from the concept of class. Every society has segregation of people into several classes; what distinguishes class from caste is that while the entry of an outsider to the former is largely open, it is impossible in the latter. Therefore, caste is an “enclosed class”. This prohibition of entry into a caste is maintained through the practice of endogamy. However, in a population that has an equal number of men and women (which is almost always the case), the death of a man creates the problem of ‘surplus woman’ and vice-versa. It becomes a problem because the desires of a surplus woman or a man can lead to inter-caste marriage, and therefore, a gradual demolition of the caste system. The problem, he explains, is solved through the practices of Sati (widow burning), forced widowhood accompanied by degradation to a condition “in which she is no longer a source of allurement” and girl marriage.
The fact that these gory practices have existed and some of them still have their traces in India reveals the society’s anxieties about desires, and its willingness to commit horrors to contain it. A critical characteristic of these horrors is their institutionalized nature that helps them perpetuate over generations. Even after over a century since this paper was written, the stories of horrific actions against inter-caste couples are commonplace. People’s engagement with such prohibited desires despite these actions, however, compels one to question their effectiveness: Why do people still engage with some desires if there are such extreme measures in place to contain them? This brings our attention to two important thoughts: the resilience of desire and the consequent futility of prohibitions. It is with these thoughts that I will enter the next section.
The Futility of Prohibition on Desire
Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Lihaaf’
The story removes the “Lihaaf”(covers) from desires of various kinds and of various people as they play out in physical and mental spaces, despite the several restrictions imposed on them — moral and otherwise.
First, it tells the story of Begum Jaan who longs for pleasure from her husband, and finds a new avenue to fill the void in her marriage. As a married woman, she can only seek pleasure from her husband. While he remains outside, she is confined to the four walls of the house; Chughtai calls her a “prisoner in the house”. The situation persists for some time before she gets introduced to Rabbu, who provides her a special kind of oil massage that brings pleasure back in her life. As the story progresses, Begum’s room becomes a space for pleasure, which takes the position of a necessity in her life, or as the narrator puts it, “more important than life’s necessities”. The story is replete with instances that hint towards a sexual relationship between Begum Jaan and Rabbu. Their relationship is important because it transgresses several kinds of moral prohibitions: it enables a sexual relationship between two women who belong to different social classes and have different skin colors, and it allows a sanctioned space for pleasure outside marriage. It is pertinent to observe that the articulation of Begum Jaan’s condition in the story changes from a “prisoner in the house” to “cut off from the world outside”. It highlights that the space that was earlier a source of confinement for Begum Jaan later becomes a source of pleasure.
Second, the narrator’s (Begum Jaan’s niece) story goes parallel with Begum Jaan’s story. Her Amma (mother) is “a believer in strict segregation for women” and therefore leaves her with Begum Jaan, instead of letting her play with her brothers and their male friends. However, this does not stop her desires from occupying her mental space. While seeing Rabbu massaging Begum Jaan, she praises her body vividly and feels like “sitting by her for hours, just adoring her”. At one point, she imagines a young boy’s face in Begum Jaan’s face. So, while we do not know whether her desire was directed at the young boy or Begum Jaan (or both!), we certainly know that her mother’s attempt to prohibit it gets challenged. In fact, her desire transcends from her mental space to the room’s physical space when she proposes the idea of giving Begum Jaan a massage in Rabbu’s absence. At the end of the story, she sees Begum Jaan and Rabbu, most likely engaged in a sexual act under the quilt and goes to bed uttering the words “Good God!”, thus rendering her mother’s attempt to prohibit her desires completely futile.
Manto’s ‘The Blouse’
While the prohibition in Lihaaf is externally imposed, this story by Manto brings out the self-imposed prohibition of desire and reveals how its irresistibility negotiates a space in a person’s mind.
Momin, a servant working in a house where two sisters live, is confused about his transition from boyhood to manhood. Diligently performing all household chores, he often finds himself touching his body parts — particularly nipples — experiencing pleasure and guilt at the same time. There is a moment in the story where after pressing his nipples for some time, he promises himself that he would never repeat the act. However, as the author says, “every second or third day, when alone, he would engage in the same old game”. As much as he tries to distance himself from sexual thoughts or feelings, he finds himself repeatedly engaging with them. The feeling intensifies when he sees Shakeela, one of the two sisters, in her vest. This is where pleasure completely takes over the self-imposed prohibition. The text provides enough evidence to suggest that he masturbates thinking about her hairy armpits. His mind, therefore, becomes a space for his pleasure and allows him to imagine seemingly non-sexual objects such as satin threads to be sexual. The repeated reference of the number ‘6’ whenever Shakeela takes off her blouse provides a metaphorical link to different senses, which are processed in the brain. This can be seen through consistent presence of elements of smell, touch, taste, sound and sight throughout the text. In this context, the other consistent subject in the text, that is, his imagination might refer to the sixth sense. It is through this imagination that he knows “from the satin trimmings in his pocket how smooth the blouse was”. The words from the text, “while the blouse was being readied, the stitches in Momin’s brain were coming undone”, provide a sense of loosening up. This loosening up is corroborated with the trope of ‘Eid’ present in the story. Preceded by rigorous fasting during the month of Ramzan, Eid marks the culmination with a feast, representing a move from abstinence to indulgence. This is how Momin’s story also moves: the first line of the text establishes the restlessness he feels, which gets released presumably in the form of a wet dream at the end. Desire, therefore, establishes a space in Momin’s mind, despite his own attempts to prohibit it.
Vijay Dan Detha’s ‘The Dilemma’
Among all kinds of prohibitions, marriage is the one that gets celebrated, and oftentimes, itself desired the most. However, like all other prohibitions, marriage too fails to suppress desire. The question raised in this story, “whose mind is not stirred by desire for a man or a woman besides the spouse?”, succinctly establishes the ‘death’ of marriage as an institution. Significant here, is the presence of a ghost that signifies both, the dead-ness of marriage as well as the imaginative nature of desire.
The story presents several dilemmas, but the most relevant to our argument is the one that the bride faces when the ghost reveals his truth (that he was disguised as her husband in his absence) to her. Whether to stay loyal to her husband, who left her alone after three days of marriage, or to engage with her desire by transgressing the boundaries of marriage is the choice she is expected to make. The ghost convinces her that from his previous experiences he knows that many women face the same dilemma. They do not touch a strange man, but their thoughts are occupied by them as they lie in their husbands’ embrace. He notes that if it could be a secret, then they would happily commit all kinds of “sins”. Early in the story, the author writes “they who set out must reach their destination”. The bride through her marriage sets out on a journey to get love and fulfil her desires. Since her husband cannot provide her that, she willingly engages in a relationship with the ghost and even procreates in the process, thus bringing out the worthlessness of the entire institution of marriage.
The story shows a direct creation out of repression, through the figure of a ghost. The line “was this ghost perhaps called into being by the bride’s own mind?” hints at the possibility of the ghost only being her imagination. The repression is highlighted at the conclusion of the story where the author says “until they (women) reach the cremation ground, they must be in the bedchamber, and when they escape the bedchamber, they go straight to the cremation ground.”. Significantly, it is the bedchamber where the consummation of the bride’s relationship with the ghost happens. Thus, desire finds a space precisely within the space meant for its prohibition.
Aditya Chopra’s ‘Mohabbatein’ (title track)
As I had previously mentioned, this argument about the futility of the prohibition of desire is not a first, and not even confined to the realm of elite commentaries. It has been made in the past too, and has been consumed and celebrated by masses innumerable times. The title track of ‘Mohabbatein’ is one such example.
The song starts at a point when Narayan Shankar (symbolizing the figure of prohibition in the film) arrives at a celebration of love. For a moment, everything comes to a standstill before Raj Aryan (symbolizing the figure of desire in the film) arrives with a drum in his hand. Beating the drum or “dhol bhajana” in Hindi is symbolic of making a declaration. He stands opposite Narayan Shankar and starts singing, while still beating the drum. The first line of the song, “Duniya me kitni hai nafrate, phir bhi dilo me hai chahate” (there is so much hatred in the world, yet there is so much love in the hearts), establishes how desire will always make space for itself in spite of the prohibitions. He continues singing “Mar bhi jaye pyaar wale, mit bhi jaye yaar wale; zinda rehti hai unki mohabbatien” (Even if the lovers die, their love endures). Here, he highlights the invincibility and immortality of desire, and precisely at this point everyone who was so far scared of Narayan Shankar in the film starts celebrating love in front of him for the first time. The camera zooms out and the couples metamorphose into “diyas” (clay lamps) lit in front of the figure of ‘Radha-Krishna’, who traditionally symbolize transgressive love (love outside marriage). The figure of these gods becomes even more significant because the song is set on the occasion of Diwali, when ‘Ram and Sita’ are typically worshipped. The director’s choice of using ‘Radha-Krishna’ instead of ‘Ram and Sita’, also depict his ode to their transgressive, and therefore prohibited, love.
Thus, the song, through its lyrics and iconography, captures the essence of my argument so far. Presenting ‘Mohabbatein’ (love) as desire, it affirmatively declares that desire will always find a space for itself and render all possibilities of prohibition futile.
From Reel to Real: A Digital Space for Prohibited Desire
With the multiple examples above, I have tried to emphasize on the futility of prohibition and how prohibition itself leads to creation of spaces for desire. However, one might still contend that these examples only exist in theory and not in practice. I have two points to address this contention: First, there is not a large difference between theory and practice. In fact, what happens in practice is exactly what gets theorized. One must not forget that these stories and songs are products of somebody’s imagination, and that mental occupancy of desire is as valid as its physical manifestations. Second, for those who may still be unconvinced about my argument might wish to refer to Raqeeb’s work. His page provides space to articulate desires that have been prohibited for too long. Repeatedly, his models — myself included — have expressed their gratitude for being provided an opportunity to sometimes assert their identity, sometimes engage with their sexual fantasy or sometimes just quench their curiosity. His audience too comprises people with different reasons for following his work, but united by a similar kind of prohibition of their desires. Raqeeb has oftentimes mentioned how the page started with his engagement with his own desire and gradually became a digital space for a plethora of people to meet that end. His work, significant as it may be, is only one example among the innumerable such spaces that exist in reality. While my engagement with Raqeeb allowed me to act on my desires, they had always occupied a space in my mind without it too!
Read Gayborhoods in Queer Politics by Abheepsita Purkayastha
References
1. Ambedkar, Bhimrao. “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development”. (1916). Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1979, pp. 3–22. Edited by Frances W. Pritchett.
2. Chopra, Aditya. “Zinda Rehti Hain Mohabbatein”. (2000). YRF. Retrieved from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cWR8QVhJLE>
3. Chughtai, Ismat. “Lihaaf (The Quilt)”. (1941). Manushi. Translated by M. Asaduddin.
4. Detha, Vijay Dan. “The Dilemma”. Manushi Prakashan, ISBN 13: 9788186573006, 1997.
5. Manto, Saadat Hasan. “The Blouse”. Penguin Publishing Group, 2009
6. Raza, Raqeeb. “daintystrangerphotos”. Instagram. Retrieved from <https://www.instagram.com/daintystrangerphotos/>
About the Author
Shivam is a social impact consultant by profession and passion. While not engaging in his consulting endeavors, he spends time interpreting meanings and extracting possibilities out of the stories that he has loved since childhood — gender, sexualities and desire being some of his staple subjects of enquiry.
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