The small beach close to which I live is lined with concrete dustbins that serve as a modesty screen for lovers. Behind every dustbin hides a couple fearful of the moral police. This is urban India 2022, and one is still afraid to love freely. I think of the 18th century poet-courtesan Muddupalani’s erotic epic, Radhika Santwanam (The Appeasement of Radhika), and of Bangalore Nagaratnamma, who reintroduced it to the world. What a brave new world Muddupalani’s was!
“A prostitute had composed the book and another prostitute has edited it.” This was what the Telugu literary magazine Sasilekha had to say about Bangalore Nagaratnamma’s edition of Muddupalani’s Radhika Santwanam. A sringara prabhandam or erotic epic written in 584 verses, a sanitised version of this literary gem was first published in 1887 and re-issued in 1907. But it was Nagaratnamma’s edition of the text based on the original palm leaf manuscript and reprinted in its entirety in 1911 that attracted censure, leading to its eventual banning.
