Way back when I was rather young, believe me, once upon a time I wasn't old, at least, I was asked to write the cover story of a daring Sunday magazine. The subject was trifling, rather unusual, and therefore after my heart: I was asked to write about my feelings for whatever was secondhand in my life! Like my used car. Like the books I bought at secondhand bookshops. Like the old Adox camera, which I managed to get from my friend or so, I thought, for a song and later regretted. But the moment I was asked to write about how I felt for my secondhand treasures, whatever they might be, I could only think about how madly, how obsessively I was in love with someone else's wife at that point in my life.
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I seriously contemplated the theme: The Importance of Being Secondhand in My Life. Maybe I attempted the same kind of high seriousness that Oscar Wilde put into his classic play, The Importance of Being Ernest! I really felt the theme of the secondhand was certainly not to be flirted with lightly. And it did call for all the serious contemplation and cogitation and slow pondering you could possibly afford, because this secondhand wasn't a used car which was waiting for ages in the 'for sale' line to come to you cheaply or an old book with pages brown and loose. Rather, this secondhand has given you a sense of victory, a sense of joy and pride for the battle that has come your way, a sense of finally emerging as a winner. Also, you really can't put aside the risk and the thrill which every illicit affair, every indiscreet relationship brings with it, as a rare repast.
(Representational Image) When love defies convention, every relationship tells a different story. /AI Generated A man or a woman, who belonged elsewhere, belonged to a different orbit, suddenly felt a new gravitational pull, withdrew, and made a daringly new move to connect to a different man or woman, to different surroundings, different dreams, different values, maybe to different food habits. And of course, the difference in bed!
A second-hand lover or wife has always been a rare thrill for me. A woman who has slept with another man, maybe many a man, that's even better, because I have never cared for virgin soils. Upturned soils have always been easier, more responsive, easier to get along with, and more ready to respond to your moves.
And if you really care to know, let me treat you as a sensible adult and tell you: upturned soils are more fertile, have more to offer, not in terms of children, but in terms of conversation, connectivity and intellection. Uninhibited social life, free flow in relationships and freedom to express one's inner self in intimate, deep and free conversation, all these extend a person and bring more colour to his or her persona.
Jean Paul Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir and Albert Camus /IMDB, Wikipedia Let's now go to the world's most famous, celebrated, and sexually most demanding, torturous, and complicated triangle between Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simon de Beauvoir. You must know that the great French existentialist philosopher Sartre and the brilliant intellectual feminist Simon didn't have any respect for the age-old institution of marriage and remained an unmarried couple, but were seldom faithful to each other. Simon, for a while, was passionately in love with Camus. And Camus, always a handsome Playboy and winner of the Nobel prize in literature before he had turned forty, had more than his share of women and was merely flirting with Simon.
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And having the intellectual satisfaction of Sartre's partner warming his bed! Now, what is most interesting is the uninhibited sexual fire and fury and jealousy embedded in the geometry of the intense relationship of these three internationally famous intellectuals and writers. What more can you ask for from total and deliberate social defiance and indiscretion?
Vātsyāyana /Wikipedia I sincerely think that ancient India went deep into the beauty and enjoyment of passionate love and the nuanced grammar of free sex. The sexual philosophy of ancient India's sexologist Vātsyāyana' s Kama Sutra bears witness to that. Vātsyāyana is totally explicit about the pleasures of a relationship with women, ripe in bed. Women who have known men. And men who know how to do the right thing at the right moment and at the right spot.
William Shakespeare /Pinterest As says William Shakespeare: Ripeness is all! As in life, so in bed!
