CHENNAI: Though most of us know what eroticism is, how many of us would dare talk about it in a public forum? But in the 17th Century, things were different. Did you ever wonder why we have some much erotica in poems, dance, music, sculptures and paintings from the 17th Century? The ‘God is My Customer’ talk that was recently curated by the Forum Art Gallery, in detail.
Focusing more on Kshetrayaa’s Padam a Telugu poet, who was one among many to compose erotic verses, Pradeep Chakravarthy, with his knowledge on ancient Tamil history and literature, spoke about eroticism in poems and general art forms. “In ancient Tamil poems, we usually find works of male poets taking the voice of the female and expressing their love. The poems are more about how women search for men,” he explains.
Pradeep then shifts gears to Telugu poems and says, “Kshetrayaa’s poems were of two types: sringara — when the poet writes about someone’s yearning for a particular person or the expression of joy when that person arrives to make love to them; upamana compares the body of man and woman to nature,” he explained. “The Telugu poet’s maximum number of works is on the temples in Kanchipuram.”
Pradeep says Kshetrayaa’s poems can be understood only when you read it more than once. The devadasis were considered to have brought out the true meaning of his poems through their dance. “Although people wanted to sanitise Bharatanatayam by preventing the devadasis from performing, the latter brought out the true erotic meaning of Kshetrayaa’s poems in a way that everyone could understand,”he adds.
Connecting the four main goals of life — moksha, artha, kama and dharma, Pradeep says that Kshetrayaa’s poems always paid attention to kama with dharma, which highlighted that lovemaking was a sign of respect the man and the woman had for each other’s desires. “When there is no dharma, it turns into moha (lust) or greed. The main reason for depicting eroticism through art openly was to find out whether it was viewed with respect,” he pointed out
Visit Forum Art Gallery, Adyar, from 10:30 am onwards to view interesting art works