The Kama Sutra Diaries by Sally Howard

Author:Sally Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2013-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

The next morning the sun rises over muesli-packet mountain views as Dimple and I breakfast on small, densely sweet Cherapunjee oranges. She’s been clamouring to get her hands on this delicacy, one of Meghalaya’s key exports into southern India, along with pungent turmeric and bharat lalokia, a chilli-based preserve that advertises itself as ‘the world’s most potent pickle’.

We’re sitting on wrought-iron chairs in guesthouse grounds modelled on an English country garden: brick paths, rambling roses, fleshy foxgloves and snapdragons in explosive bloom.

‘Pariat’s theory about hysteria reminded me of something,’ says Dimple, picking up a red, bullet-shaped sour fruit – another of Meghalaya’s specialities that, like ja-snam (rice cooked in pigs’ blood), fails to find many takers beyond the state borders. She nibbles a corner, and winces.

‘Meghalaya was where they used to send the English ladies during the Raj. There were sanatoria here run by the missions. The idea was that the fresh air and high altitudes would cure these women of the hysteria that came upon them in the Indian heat.’

Dimple has a theory about hysteria, as she tells me now, through a mouthful of orange segments. ‘We saw hysteria with the Victorian Britons, and we see the same now with Indian women. Hysteria is what women do when they’re suppressed, isn’t it?

‘Indian women are the world’s biggest hypochondriacs: we can’t breathe one minute; another minute we’re dying of a dramatic illness. Like those British ladies with their fainting couches. Looking back, I used to be like that. It was the only way I could protest against my fate, my traditional husband and my controlling mother-in-law. I’d become ill and take myself to bed.’

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