Sarpadamsha, the "only" Nepli novel to deal with (male) child sexuality [full spoilers] सर्पदंश

सर्पदंश

Reading Sarpadamsha was deeply disturbing. And yet, the book was very very brave. Or maybe, just naïve, at an age when all kinds of expressions were probably not frowned upon, and a discussion of children and sexuality was not seen as disturbing or obscene.

I don't know how the book was received when it came out. Today, all I see for it is praise, online. Mostly from men. I haven't seen any woman praise it, or even mention it. So I will go ahead and list out why I find it fascinating and disturbing in equal measures.

But first, a short intro of the book. Sarpadamsha was written by Tarini Prasad Koirala, who belongs to the famous Koirala family. Apart from being a literary writer, Koirala was also a journalist and political activist. The book was published in 1969, and Koirala died five years later in 1974. Sarpadamsha, which means snakebite, has been hailed as the only Nepali novel to deal with child sexuality. I don't know about "only," because there might be many such books flying under the radar, but to date, it has been the only book I have read which lays out child sexuality so honestly and so bravely, no holds barred, in any language.

So here goes, my reflections about Sarpadamsha.

· Men and the female body

Let us start with the male fascination for the female body. The book starts with how the boy Kammu loves smelling his sister Nimmi's hair. The degree of disturbance from the underlying incestual theme, we will get to that later. For now, let's talk of just how much the man is fascinated by the woman. Kammu loves to smell Nimmi's hair, sometimes even putting it in his mouth.

And then, there is a whole chapter of how Nimmi goes to pee, and he is fascinated by the sound of her peeing which is different from the sound of his pee or his friends'. In fact, a lot of the plot revolves around Nimmi and her pee, how he makes a special place for her to pee so that he can enjoy it alone and no one else does. The paragraph, or rather a whole page, devoted to how the sound of the pee reminds him of an apsara in the underworld, and the sound of her anklets and her warm embrace, I found it to be the most beautiful in Nepali literature, or in any literature. One of the most beautiful writing portraying pleasure, the way your senses can overwhelm you and the way a person can get lost in the sensual, completely unaware of anything else, even the whole world outside.

But then, you wake up with a jerk and realise that this paean is about the sound of a girl peeing. Sigh. So this is how much men romanticize the woman's body. Or rather, Kammu is not old enough to romanticize anything. But this is simply how he perceives the female body.

Later, there is also a whole chapter devoted to how much Kammu is fascinated by his mother's sari that she has just taken off, the warmth of it, the folds of it, the femininity of it. And the blouse, how he rolls around in it, even smelling the half sweet and half disgusting smell from the faded armpit part. This chapter adds to this portrayal of the male fascination with the female body, but the sections on the pee are actually enough to portray that fascination. Even the most disgusting parts of the female body appear mysterious and attractive to him.

I guess, this is how the female body appears to most men.

This is what I gather from my conversations with men, and also from books, movies, songs, etc created by men. The female is fascinating. Men find it mysterious, unknowable, and thus would like to know more. Anything to get close to a woman, whether it is rolling around in her clothes and smelling them, or looking at the mud where a woman has peed, and peeing in the same place. To look at women, their body parts, to touch and feel them, that seems to be the ultimate of happiness and joy for most men. To be lost inside a woman, that's the ultimate goal. A woman, is the answer to all problems. A woman, is the key to bliss, oblivion. A woman soothes, a woman heals, a woman loves. Nothing else can even come close. A woman, conquered, means the world at your feet.

Freud and penis envy be damned, most men identify with a womb envy where they feel envy or exclusion from women's bodies, women's experiences, which in turn is the root of their attraction, or their desire to control, women. Here, I am talking of the experience of most men, because there are always exceptions and I am not talking of them here.

· Women and the male body

And here, I would like to interject my own theories of how this male fascination with the female body colors male perceptions of women, and how women are the center of the world for everyone.

Let's start with whether the male fascination of the female body is replicated by women. For most women (again, I want to talk of most women and not the exceptions), the fascination is not replicated. Women are not fascinated by the male body in the same way that, for example, Kammu is fascinated by his sister and his mother. No girl, even little girls, would like to watch her brother or father pee, and think it a mysterious and enjoyable experience. No girl would like to roll around in her father's clothes.

Sure, there are many girls and even grown up women who who wear their father or brothers' shirts, trousers, hoodies, blazers, and sweaters - Girls are attracted to male clothes for various reasons, for example ease of wear, or attraction to the freedoms that men enjoy, or a rejection of patriarchal expectations of feminine appearance, or affection, or finding role models in fathers, and many other reasons. But most of it is definitely NOT dripping in sexual attraction the way that Kammu's proximity to his mother's sari is. What I mean is, I am pretty sure the girls would not like to smell their father or brother's underwear, the way Kammu smells and even licks his mother's blouse.

Instead, girls focus such attentions on mothers and female figures. Everyone knows that girls like to roll around in their mothers' clothes, or other women's.

From an early age, girls dress up in saris and drapes. Because drapes are fascinating, maybe. Or maybe, that women are fascinating to everyone. Why wouldn't they be? Women create, women nourish, women are beautiful, women are the centre of the world, especially the child's and the infant's. The mother knows your heart, in a way that no one else does. In fact, mothers know all hearts, their knowledge of all family members, and every guest and relative, is intimate, while the fathers' knowledge is cursory. The mother fulfills your desires, the mother is accessible in ways that most fathers aren't. The mother is present, listens to you and keeps tabs on you, the father is absent, or absent minded, and doesn't remember what you said last time, or what you like to read or eat or play. The mother seems to be the only person who sees you, like really sees you as a person and not background noise. No wonder, the mother is every child's first love, not just the boy child's.

If the writer had cared to explore the attractions of Nimmi, I am sure he would have found her, too, rolling around in her mother's clothes, pleating the folds of her sari and trying out her blouse to see if her breasts fit in that big cup, and then removing it hastily before her inflated chest in the looking glass made her blush. Girls like to explore their mother's makeup kit, smearing her lipstick and dousing her perfume, wondering if the rouge is bland enough to be inconspicuous when then stealthily wear it in company. Most girls like to drown in femininity, before feminism takes over.

There is a whole chapter about how Kammu likes the touch of his mother's thighs. When he figures out that she is not wearing a petticoat, he finds all kinds of excuses to go near her, touch her thighs through her sheer and slippery sari, rest on them, slide on them, lean on them as he stands up. The softness, the whiteness, the gentleness of his mother's thighs, yes, that is the height of pleasure for him, the ultimate goal.

For no girl are her father's thighs the ultimate goal. Can you imagine a girl drowning in the thoughts of touching her father's thighs, rolling on them, slipping on them, and finding every excuse to snuggle them? Hahaha. Just the thought makes me laugh. Maybe, girls and boys might hang about a father's legs for affection, but this image is definitely not clouded in the mystery, attraction and the purely physical terms of Kammu's attraction for his mother's thighs. A father's legs or thighs are just incidental, there is not much a girl has to say about them.

Instead, here too, girls are attracted to their mothers. Maybe not in the sexual terms in which Kammu's attraction is described: he has to get close to his mother stealthily, guiltily, because his mother thinks he is too big to sit on her lap, but she will still indulge him sometimes, and he makes lots of pretensions so that he can keep touching her naked thighs. But, in affectionate, intimate terms, a girl always wants to roll around her mother. Again, not necessarily in a sexual way for most girls, but the feeling of warmth, safety, and affection that a mother's body gives, leaning back into her ample breasts, sliding off of the folds of her post-partum tummy, only these give the feeling that you are safe in this world, safe from the gaze of this world, because you are with your mamma.

· Male projection of their attraction to the opposite sex

So, women are the center of the world, for both boy and girl children. And for most grown up men, and for most grown up women. Men are never the center of anyone's world except giddy teenaged girls. But men don't know that. And, they often project their fascination of the opposite gender on women, I think. And this here is just my opinion. What I mean is, men think women want to roll around in their clothes, smell their underwear, see their genitals (the way Kammu is always trying to peek into Nimmi's panties). That's why they keep sending all these dick pics, or think that the way their penis looks matters. Even mad men will flash random women on the roadside, they probably expect women to faint from excitement, the way they would if a woman flashed her breasts. Sorry bro, it simply doesn't work that way!

Like I said before, women are just as fascinated by femininity as men are, but maybe not in such a highly sexual manner, the degree varies with every woman probably. Very complicated, I know. But then, women are not fascinated in a sexual way by the male anatomy either, probably because that space for fascination is already taken by the feminine, and very little is left for the male body. Actually I don't know the reason why, but that's just how it is.

I am going to meander a bit here. Sure, women enjoy and admire the male body, the face, the body, the appearance, the clothes, the style, but it doesn't immediately lead to sexual arousal, the way the sight of breasts or a naked female body might for a man, or the way a man's touch might for a woman. (Again, I am talking of the average female, I am sure women's sexuality spans a wide spectrum). Or does it? And I do not know because we do not talk enough about what arouses women? I would have thought a woman would not masturbate to pictures of a naked man, the way a man might masturbate to pictures of a naked woman. Or does she? I hope fellow women can tell me.

So, men, should stop thinking that dickpics will cause women to hyperventilate, is what I was trying to say, because it just doesn’t work that way.

This equation is not reciprocal, and that is how nature made it, and there is nothing that can change it. What I mean is, the effect that the female body has on the man is explosive, in the words of Bijay Kumar (in his autobiography Khushi, his favorite words to describe a good looking woman is 'explosive body structure'). That immediately makes women more powerful than men. However, the opposite is not true. The woman is not so fascinated by the male body, nor does she find it mysterious. Let me repeat what I said above about the male perception of the female, and then state that none of this is true for the opposite.

A woman, is the answer to all problems. A woman, is the key to bliss, oblivion. A woman soothes, a woman heals, a woman loves. Nothing else can even come close. A woman, conquered, means the world at your feet.

But, a man is not the answer to all problems. A man is not the key to bliss and oblivion. A male body does not soothe, or heal, or love. A man, conquered, means just more work - having to love him. Nothing comes close, there is no equivalent to the male idea of the female.

But, men being men, they continue to put themselves at the center of the world, and at the center of the woman's worldview, and continue to write and paint and publish art which contains this worldview. Which is very skewed. And very untrue. And it makes women doubt themselves and wonder if this is how they should feel about men. But that's not how they feel about real men, ultimately.

I am going to meander a little bit here again. By now, because we have read and seen so much of it, we know the average man's trajectory of love: that he falls in love with his mother, and then looks for a woman similar to his mother, and expects his wife to be not an equal partner, but an all enveloping mother who takes care of him and indulges him and comforts him, a being far greater than himself. But, the greatness cannot be acknowledged because of patriarchy, so he seeks to dominate her. But, I think, still don't have an idea of the average woman's trajectory, because the boy child and the girl child are both in love with the mother, first of all. Then, the girl starts to emulate the mother. What happens then? How does she start subconsciously forming the image of her ideal partner? The boy easily adapts the mother, but the girl cannot easily adapt the father, because the father does not provide the all-encompassing love that a mother does, which a woman also wants from her partner. The girl also cannot emulate the mother, because she wants to be mother. I can't even learn anything from my own experiences. How is my husband like my father? I don't know. I don't think he is. Maybe women adapt their father, but not as an ideal, more like "what to expect". Sigh. That would help understand why women enter and stay in abusive relationships. Because that is what they know, and that is what they expect, and that is what hey understand and can deal with. Sigh

There are just my ruminations from the portrayal of Kammu's fascination with the female body in this book. There is so much to unpack in this book….

· The fascination with sensation

Now let us go back to the book and its various facets. Kammu is fascinated by sensations. He likes to explore his senses, whether it is by smelling Nimmi's fragrant hair, or by running his hand through piles of silky mustard, or gathering a cow's gushing pee in his hands, or playing with the cow's slippery, wet teats with his mouth. I have never read such vivid descriptions of the sensations that children enjoy, or such unabashed ones. Ones that might be considered disgusting or obscene or objectionable in many, many ways. However, I understand these feelings, even when they might disgust me sometimes or I object to them.

I think all children are fascinated by what their hands and eyes and ears can explore. I remember being fascinated by water, just loving the feel of running water against my hands. I also remember being fascinated by the sight of water – waterfalls, or the water flowing inside a sinkhole for instance, the way it rotates and revolves, but again all flows forward. The obsession with running water, even grown men and women are mesmerized by it, so no wonder Kammu likes to hold gushing cow pee in his hands. I just equate it to how much I enjoy being in a hot shower.

The space that the writer describes, where Kammu likes to hide – a quiet space hidden by trees and creepers, where he can watch a little canal in peace – that sounds beautiful and peaceful, that sounds like heaven. That sounds like just the kind of space that I used to love as a child – probably still do, but don't have the luxury of seeking it any more.

I don't particularly like the idea of some of the things described, like putting a cow's teat in your mouth, which has just been covered by the wet, slippery drool of a calf that had been suckling it. It almost makes me want to puke. But then, I remember that as a child, it didn't matter to me how dirty the water was, I just wanted to splash in it, even in the dirty Balkhu khola that I met sometimes on the way. My mother would yell at me if she found out. But did I care? No. There was a sloping meadow near our house, where we loved to roll from the top to the bottom. Did we care that the meadow was full of cow dung, dirty mud, and many other kinds of sundry dirt? No, absolutely not. When I see from that perspective, Kammu's attraction to the drool-full cow's teat doesn't seem so strange. Today I look at my daughter who wants to play with sand, rolling around in it, spreading it all over her clothes and body – and that realization is renewed – that children just like sensations, the clean and the dirty of it don't really matter to them.

When Kammu moved on to exploring the body parts of a just-slaughtered goat, I can't say that I understood it even one bit. But the writer makes his case strongly - how Kammu likes to touch the lungs and the intestines of the goat, which come to think of it, are not unlike the drooly, slippery cow's teat. Kammu likes to put his hands inside the neck and feel the warmth of the goat's body, where he finds heaven. And he just wishes someone would put him inside their body, where he could hide forever.

In this way, by way of the slaughtered goat, the writer gets at one universal truth that all human beings share – that we were all happiest inside our mother's stomachs, and the outside world is so traumatic that we spend the rest of our life searching for just that relationship – a warm envelope to cocoon us. Whether in hugs or embraces or in any other kind of intimacy. And at the end of the day, only an intense, intimate connection with another human being can make you feel safe and loved.

Kammu is intensely disappointed to learn that he was once inside his mother's stomach but that he doesn't remember any of it, that the happiest, most blissful time of his life passed without his knowing, and that there is no way for him to get back inside his mother's tummy. We all are, honey.

· Exploration of sensations leads to bodies

While Kammu is busy exploring the world with his eyes, ears, skin, and fingers, it is not surprising that he discovers the most sensualities to explore in the human body. Touching skin, smelling hair, enjoying a warm embrace, it is but a natural extension of touching mud or running your fingers through a sack full of silky mustard.

The book starts with Kammu and Nimmi sleeping in the same room in different beds. Kammu wakes up, then sidles over to Nimmi where he lies down spooning her so that he can smell her hair. I am already terrified by this scene. Where is his penis? What is it doing? Is it pushing into her? We are not told. The book does not discuss the male genitalia. But in the next chapter when Kammu wants to put his hand inside a molehill and enjoy the moist dampness and the crumbly mud inside such a hole (his favorite hobby) and Nimmi sits down next to him so that he can smell her hair at the same time and he embraces her from the back and when her ears unknowingly fall into his mouth, he lets it – or rather, she lets it – seemingly unconscious of it, while he goes ahead and consciously closes his mouth over those ears, my terror is rising. I can't even bear it, until Nimmi breaks the suspense by getting up to pee.

Getting up to pee? Is this pee? Or is something else stirring in her nether parts that she cannot identify, and thus assumes she has to pee? The writer crafts dread even better than Stephen King, if you can believe it. For a while Nimmi defuses the tension by peeing (though I don't believe it was just pee), but it builds up again, to a height, when Kammu is mesmerized by the sound of her pee, is so hypnotized that after she finished, he watches the spot where she has peed, is fascinated by how the mud is formed into crumbles where she has peed, decides that Nimmi cannot be doing this in public where everyone else can see or hear this, realizes that he doesn't want to share this special sensations with anyone, and resolves to build a special place for her to pee.

For a while, the writer turns to other sensations that Kammu is interested in, and I breathe a sigh of relief. There Kammu is, exploring his quiet, hidden cavern, exploring the cowshed and its inhabitants (and here too, there is a vaguely disturbing scene of Kammu making cows pee by teasing, stroking their soft parts just under their tails), here is Kammu wishing he could marry his mother (I am not very shocked by this, as perhaps the writer intended or as the original readers probably were. We have read too much about the Oedipus complex by now, we know that the mother is the first love of most men). Here is Kammu playing with his mother's clothes, here is Kammu poking around a just-dead goat's warm body.

But then, in between, there are scenes that take my breath away. When, for example, Kammu decides that he is being disloyal to his sister when he is enjoying the quiet space alone, and invites her into it. I shudder as I turn the page, dreading what will happen when Nimmi enters this sacred, hidden space – so ripe for intimacy, so ripe for secrecy, so ripe for explorations and pleasures. Then they decide to do that thing again – where he pokes his hand into a molehill and smells her hair at the same time, and she offers her ear up for him to play with, confessing that she loves it when he does so. That confession, it set my heart pounding – where is it gonna go next? And the writer did take it further, when, after Kammu has explored all that he likes to do, which includes his mother's thighs, the next time brother and sister are together, Kammu decides to forget the molehill and embrace his sister instead, and realizes that this, this embrace, was his greatest desire. Again, I am terrified, what is his penis doing?

The writer never tells us, but it is very clear where the book is headed, when the next scene again shows us the two of them sleeping in the same room. (Why the hell are they in the same room?) Kammu gets up early because he wants to watch the goat slaughter, but decides not to wake up Nimmi because it is not time yet. So what does he do? Take a peek into her panties, caress her white thighs. And have the epiphany that the sweet, almond smell from her mouth is even sweeter than the smell of her hair. Be fascinated by the bit of drool hanging from the corner of her mouth, point his tongue in that direction, and lick it. Yes, lick it, not once but twice.

· Is child sexuality "innocent"?

I have heard this book described as an "innocent" exploration of child sexuality. But to me, the book does not seem innocent.

What does innocent mean, anyways? Innocent can mean two things here in this context – one is the lack of intent to harm, and one is the lack of sexuality. Surely, Kammu is innocent in the first regard – he has no intention of harming his sister. But he is not innocent in the second regard – his desires are definitely sexual, and they grow more and more pronounced with the book. While Kammu has no idea that his actions might be harming his sister, the writer does, so presenting it as "innocent" is very very dangerous, I think, something which bulldozes over the victim, here.

Let us go back to the book and see how it becomes less and less innocent.

There are too many instances of implied desire, for me to take these explorations as innocent. There are one too many instances of Kammu trying to peek into his sister's panties, too much intensity in his gazing of his one and a half year old sister's naked genitals, too much beautification of that infant's private parts out for display, too many descriptions of Nimmi taking off her trousers to pee, too provocative descriptions of her various body parts that can be seen despite her clothes – like a piece of bone jutting out below her neck, or her slender white thighs visible when she pees. Too many instances when the omniscient writer almost regrets that all of Nimmi's body parts are hidden when she pees. At one point, Kammu decides to pee in the exact same spot that Nimmi has peed – don't tell me this isn't implied intercourse. And it is, actually, spelled out in one scene when Kammu realizes that he loves Nimmi more than anything, and that Nimmi represents the fulfillment of all his desires – in her he finds his dearest lover – premika is the word in Nepali. I feel nothing but abject terror when I turn the pages one by one and wonder where this prem will lead next.

And here I am not even thinking of the pedophilia angle – although there is a case for it, considering it is written by a grown man. But now I am just thinking of Kammu, 7, and Nimmi, 6, and thinking of how natural it is for them to fall in – for lack of better words – sin.

· The ending, which justifies the story

And so, when the ending comes, which is [full spoilers] that Kammu is bitten by a cobra when he has put his hands into a snake's bill instead of a molehill, and dies, it seems like the only ending possible for this story. Like Hindi film heroes in the 70s who had to die because there was no more role left for them in the story, Kammu has to die. Because, what else would he do?

At the point we left him, he had already made his habit of peeking into his sister's panties obvious, how long before he actually got a glimpse? Before he reached out to touch it? He has already articulated his desire to hold Nimmi's gushing pee in his hands, just as he holds cow pee in his hands. How long before he confesses it to Nimmi, and she, in all her doting love for her brother, agrees? At the last point that we left him, he had already reached out his tongue to dreg up a bit of spittle leaking out of Nimmi's mouth. How long before he reaches her mouth, the source of all that sweet almond smell and the most desirable thing in the world? How long before Nimmi wakes up, confesses that she likes the sweet smell and soft touchof his mouth just as much? She has already confessed that she likes him putting her ear in his mouth, letting his warm lips and tongue play with her lobes. How long before she concedes to everything? How long before, again, for lack of a better word, sin?

And so, this story would have taken a very drastic turn, had it continued. It would have to end in tragedy, or it would have entered a very different, very dark genre of incest or rape. Kammu would have to become a villain, from this "innocent" explorer. There was no other end possible for Kammu. Only death could have salvaged him, and it did.

The title, Sarpadamsha, also seems symbolic. It speaks not just of the real snakebite that killed Kammu, but also of the poison of desire running in his veins, which was the actual killer.

That part where Kammu dies, it reminds me of another book, The Memory of Leaves by Manan Karki. Leaves is a very bleak book. There is nothing in it that lifts the soul. Page after page after page of dreariness. If gloomy Sunday was a book, it would be this book. Not that it's bad, it's quite well written. But the subject is: regretting the preventable death of a child. All your life. That's all there is in the book. Different characters' take on the same regrettable death. And it just never lets up and there's no pleasure in reading this book, only drowning in misery so why would you even read it? Unless you are going through something like that yourself and it helps you cope, maybe?

Anyways, I don't know why I spoke so much about that book. Maybe because I didn't write a separate review of it and all this was left unsaid, haha.

To come back to how it is relevant to Sarpadamsha. There is that paragraph where the father mourns the daughter, who was five years old when she died. The father says something like, "you were innocent. The whole world is full of sin, and you were the only innocent one. But then, I would have wanted you to live, and if you had lived, you would certainly have become a part of this sinful world, you would certainly have sinned. Only a five year old could have died innocent."

These are not the exact words in the book, which are more poetic and poignant. Believe me, the book is well written.

But anyhow, the point here is that this is how Kammu died as well. Innocent. He had not yet sinned. And if his death had come one moment later, he would have fallen into sin, for sure. For wasn't he entwined with Nimmi, in their favorite position, when the snake bit him? Hadn't he realized, in their last such episode, that embracing her was his greatest need? Hadn't he just licked the sweet juice off of her mouth?

The paragraph in which the writer evaluates Kammu's life, is again very beautiful and touching, [out of context, it reminded me of the final-thoughts scene in Ranjhana, in how emotional and poignant it is], until you wake up with a jerk and realise that it is about a brother who touched his sister. The writer says something like, in this short life, Kammu experienced everything, he experienced the height of pleasures, the height of love, the tinkle of the apsara and her warm embrace, so he had no regrets, nothing left to live for.

I don't even know how to articulate the problems here: that this height of pleasure is something very dangerous, which could have scarred Kammu and Nimmi both for life. And so, like the writer says, truly, he has nothing to live for any more.

· Problematic "innocence"

After having written almost five thousand words about it, I still don't think I have clearly articulated why this novel is problematic. I'm going to try again.

I gave this book to my husband to read, because as parents of a growing girl, I thought there was much of interest for us in the book, so much for us to discuss. He just read the first chapter and said, this book is very dark.

Dark?? I said, No, people have praised it as a great exploration of child sexuality.

If that girl was my daughter, would I be happy? He said.

And the answer, immediately, was 'NO'.

And that is the problem. The book presents Kammu as the hero, and romanticizes his adventures, where his love for Nimmi is presented as the ideal love. But what of Nimmi? What of the six year old who is innocently accepting her brother's overtures? When Kammu and Nimmi grow up, how will they look back on these incidents? While Kammu will get away without censure, it is Nimmi who will have to bear the scars of abuse! (We will deal with this theme again in the final section about the Koirala brothers). What I am trying to say is that the writer is sympathetic towards Kammu and presents his explorations of his sister's body as a happy adventure, but maybe Nimmi doesn't feel that way? Maybe Tarini doesn't know how a female would feel to have her body so violated before she knows what is happening, which is why he is able to present this experience as positive. If Tarini had lived in the age of #metoo and tales of modern buhari and other such outlets, he would probably know that girls grow up hating such childhood experiences, dealing with feelings of revulsion, helplessness and PTSD all their lives. Yes, all their lives. Maybe this book could never have been written then. Or, maybe, like many men, he would have happily ignored the women's confessions and still written this book with a huge blind spot. Haha.

Anyways, like most literature before the twentieth century, like most literature that we encounter, this book is also an example of the male gaze. Kammu is attracted towards his sisters, but we don't know if Nimmi feels the attraction to the same degree. Yes, she receives his attentions with pleasure, but is she also enticed by his underwear and his drool, the sound of his pee and the sight of his penis, to the same degree? Probably not. So while we have a book that shows us a male child's sexuality, we still don't have a book that shows us a female or any other gender child's sexuality. And therefore, it is the men who praise it as being good or innocent or rich or whatever. As a woman, and as the parent of a girl child, I feel only abject terror at Kammu's increasing exploration. So this is where the book is problematic.

No, I don't want my girl to receive such attentions. I don't want her to be swayed by these explorations and fall into them and be deceived and end up entering intimate relationships before she understands what they are. These words seem like I am speaking of a pedophile. But it's not a pedophile, it's another boy just as naïve as her, and that's the whole problem. You can warn your child about a pedophile, but how do you warn them about someone they love? You can tell them all about good touch and bad touch, but what if they find the touch good? What if they decide that adults know nothing, and continue their good and wonderful explorations. Actually, it's not a question of what if, we know that this is a fact, and that this is how innumerable children grow up and are introduced to sexuality. Things which are hushed up when they realise what they have done and how it impacts their lives. How do we deal with this? How do we tell children to wait?

· How to deal with child sexuality?

I have no answers. I sense that there is something fundamentally wrong in the way our society treats child sexuality – today our attitude is to pretend that it doesn't exist. But as we have already discussed here, children are fond of sensations – that much is known to everyone, and happily acceptable. But sexuality is but a natural extension of that. Pretending it doesn't exist lets us nowhere, and there are no healthy outlets for that sexuality in our society today. In any society in the world, guess.

I think we need to acknowledge that children do feel desire, even if they do not recognize it, and do not know its implications. What after that? What kind of healthy outlets can we have for children? I don't know. How do we caution them to wait for intimacy? I don't know, because I don't think such cautioning works. These things happen away from adult eyes, because children know adults will disapprove, but also, why should they stop experimenting and exploring something which feels so wonderful?

The book blurb puts this across quite succinctly.

Kammu has two different worlds. One is full of sorrow and the other is full of heavenly delights, contentment and pleasure. There is no limit of sadness, frustration and disappointment in the sorrowful world. Here, all his desires are frustrated, all freedoms are taken away, and there are obstacles to everything he wants to do. At that moment, he feels that the world is not a livable place. People object to every small thing he wants to do. Whatever he finds fun and good, those are the things supposed to be bad, which he shouldn't do!

So yeah, the world is not a livable place. Kammu has to die, because there is no outlet for his sexuality in this world. Now that the poison of sexuality (Koirala was not Christian, but a biblical reference still works here) is in his veins, there is no other fate for him but to be ejected from Eden.

· The Koirala connection

The book raises many other foods for thought for the average reader of Nepali literature who is likely to be familiar with the works of BP Koirala. One notices certain similarities in the works of the brothers: the obsession with dissecting sexual psychology, we will come back to it later. But first, let us talk about the settings. The setting is Madhes, like so many of BP's book. It is hot out there, the houses are big, there are wide open fields, and there are cows and buffaloes in the shed. Very reminiscent of some of BP Koirala's novels and his autobiography. The protagonist is obviously a rich zamindar type, he is called "Kammu Babu" by everyone. Even the names of the protagonists are Madhesi-sounding: Kammu and Nimmi.

There are a few scenes where the setting is key to the story. One time when Kammu notices his older sister Sarita pass him by, and then hears the sound that he has come to associate with Nimmi peeing. He looks, and he sees Sarita sitting down with her sari spread out around him, and realizes that she too is capable of making that magical sound that he thought only Nimmi possessed. In the present context of indoor toilets that have locks in them, this scene is almost laughable. And yet, for most of history, this is how humanity peed. A life changing moment, a step forward in one's understanding of sexuality, is just not possible anymore. Even children are not going to pee out in the open anymore, so these easily available, life changing moments, just won't be there any more….

Also, the frame is full of Madhesi characters – in one scene, Kammu and Nimmi go out to play with other children, and find themselves among Musahar, Dusadh and Tharu children. I was reminded of Narendra dai, and BP Koirala's lusty descriptions of the luscious Munariya – she with the handful of breasts that Gauri Bhauju is lacking. Even among children, you can see that exoticizing of the Madhesi beauty – the fair, beautiful Belariya, or the scantily clad Musahar girl Phulbati who had nothing but a langauti on her body.

If that scene of scantily clad children embracing each other, or reassuring each other by patting each other's back, or embracing each others' shoulders while they play a game of – who are you going to marry when you grow up? Sounds sexual, that's because it is. Haven't we all played such games, long before we were supposed to know about any of this? Once again, reminiscent of how BP Koirala speaks of first learning of his sexual organ from a Madhesi girl who lifts up her frock and pulls down his pants and shows him that they are different. Almost the same scene can be found in Sarpadamsha, where Kammu wonders why his pee makes a different sound and ruffles up the mud differently than NImmi's pee – decides that the best way to answer this question is by showing Nimmi the difference – and starts peeing right there in front of Nimmi – to which she answers that the difference is because his hole is smaller than hers.

Somehow, I can't believe that these scenes were imagined. That scene in BP Koirala's book is found in his autobiography, as well as in one of his novels, I forgot which, probably Narendra dai. And Sarpadamsha, it is so intimate and so detailed and so rich and honest that I simply cannot believe it was imagined. I have a feeling that these were real experiences turned into novels. And that raises strange feelings in my mind.

· Unequal impact of childhood explorations

So these Koirala brothers, getting their sex education for free from indigenous women, and then going out and about and valorizing their own sexuality - BP became famous as the "expert of human sexuality", a title that still no one has been able to upstage him from in Nepali literature - but now we know where that knowledge came from, from his premarital explorations most probably, which enabled to portray wild and highly sexual women much removed from reality, because his view of his explorations was one sided - he apparently thought of the woman as willing and consenting and enjoying her sexuality, and had no thoughts of the concerns I have outlined about. And what happens to the said indigenous woman? BP answers it in his novel, when he meets his childhood friend after several years. She is now a grown up woman, who has given birth to children, and now is fat and dark with a lolling belly. In other words, she has undergone a normal, postpartum transformation that most women go through. BP's response when he sees her after decades, is a 50-years-ago version of "yo ta aunty po bhayechha!" Something like, she is so fat and dark now, I can't even recognize her, I feel none of the attraction that I felt for her before.

By extension, this is the response that most men would give in this situation, men who freely explore their sexuality with female friends in a guilt free manner, and later go on to shame women for these experiences. This reminds me of another Nepali novel, I forgot the name, it could be Bhramar, but Roop Narayan Singh will rise up from his grave and kill me if it isn't. Anyways, it is a very old novel from that era only, where the protagonist is a "Bhramar" or a bee who likes to suck from many flowers. The protagonist goes through several adventures, some of them romantic, before settling on one person. And in between, he meets one woman, who greets him with a salute and hangs around him, expecting something. He sees that woman's son, far away. He takes out his wallet, gives her a few rupees, and goes away with tears in his eyes. There is a sort of a footnote like comment: that woman was his first intimate relationship, that he had when he was 13 or 14, and that young man was his son!

And then, my head started buzzing from the inadequacy of his response to his first woman, who has no other sources of earning, and his son, who he doesn't even bother to speak to. And then, this response is considered adequate or great or compassionate, I guess, for this is the hero of the book! This is all that men need to do, all that they owe their first loves, a few rupees and two drops of tears. Which means, close to nothing. This is the fate that Nimmi would be headed for, while Kamu could get married to a virgin and live a happy life, and become respected for his knowledge of human sexuality!

So, for BP, and for most men, the childhood sexual intimacy has no consequences. He is free to learn from her, use her or possible abuse her, and later come back and judge the woman and discard her. And that is another reason men like these books, but women cannot take these Koirala heroines, these symbols of lush and fee sexuality, these symbols of romantic love and erotic sensations, in the same manner. I wonder how the Madhesi girl of BP Koirala's book felt about the childhood intimacies, but of Nimmi, I am perhaps more sure. Nimmi, from a conservative Brahmin family, would be wracked by guilt and regret and revulsion when she grows up, and will forever rail at the violation on her person that happened before she could understand what it meant. And if Kammu had grown up, he would have come back to her thirty years later and said, hey, ta ta aunty po bhayechha. Paila jasto ramri ta chhaina!

And now I conclude with the book's conclusion, which sums up the problematic parts of the book in ways that I cannot even articulate.

After her brother dies, Nimmi frequents their favorite spot. She is described as "one who has lost everything." I guess I have no qualms there. She imagines her brother Kammu in the underworld, living the life of his dreams. She imagines him tagging on to the end of the sari of a beautiful apsara, listening to the sound of her anklets, letting him play with her beautiful slender arms and her body, loving him with all her heart and making him happy. The apsara turns around, and Nimmi sees that it is herself!

· Conclusion

Despite how disturbing the book is, the book is also very very brave, and very daring, in laying out everything that goes on in a child's mind. Today, I think, a writer would have hesitated to depict a seven year old embracing a six year old, or smelling or hair and nuzzling her ears with his lips and peeking into her panties. The attraction to the mother, that's been written about a lot already. But the children's physical attraction to each other, it is not pleasant to deal with, and we would like to unsee it. But at the same time, it is true, it is real, and it is out there, and especially as parents, we have no option but to acknowledge it, to find ways to deal with it. But if this book was written today, there would be much censoring of it, I am sure. So we would not have had this window through which to peek into child sexuality. So for this, I thank the writer.

I don't know how this got published then. Probably the same way that all misogynist stuff gets published: everyone in the production chain was male and thought this was a wonderful projection of their own childhood fantasies and no one gave a thought to how it rampages over the female character.

And that brings us again to the male gaze, and what this book leaves out, what its blind spot is, while it brings the boy child's sexuality to light. Yes, we have a rare, honest book on child sexuality, but it is about the male child. What of the female child? Or a child of any other gender? Can you imagine critics and readers praising the book just as much if the protagonist was a female? If it was Nimmi who was actively exploring her older or younger brother's body? No, I don't think so, because the sexually active female is much more censured than a male, while Kammu's explorations pass for innocent, Nimmi's wouldn't. So we still don't have a book about a girl child who explores senses, discovers her sexuality, and actively expresses it, while dealing with social censure, or feelings of shame, or coming to terms with it as she grows up. So, Sarpadamsha, for all its rarity, is still not enough to show us the full picture of child sexuality.