Seema Anand

One of her major goals in the revival of Oral Indian Literature is re-telling the stories and changing the way girls are viewed there, from being suferers to being sturdy and powerful. So that her stories might be of great help to rural and urban girls.

Seema’s work essentially is about reviving Indian mythologies, particularly the Mahabharata, Ramayana, lectures on Tantra, the Mahavidyas, the Kama Sutra, and the Bhagavad Gita. Seema’s work is associated with the UNESCO mission for Endangered Oral Traditions. She makes use of Stories to unfold attention to positive issues, particularly women’s issues. She believes that “Stories have such a lot of aspects and so many functions-I need to see them respected and ofer a means of subsistence for the tellers.”

Coming from a family where gender does not defne your identity, she was appalled at the gender inequality she encountered - what society expects of you as a married couple. She tried to overcompensate by developing traits that are alien to her, such as becoming a "joker" within the group. She felt left out and had to either continue to be a victim looking for happiness in others or start looking for happiness within herself. Life changes and so do we. A wife and mother of two sons had a desire to change the world for the better when their daughter was born.

“I began exploring female role models only to discover the myth of female stories - the identity of a woman is a perfect fgure of tolerance and beauty. ‘Imperfections’ make her not a ‘good’ woman and there were no stories of a woman having the right to her own sexuality. Her body was always someone else’s property.”

"The core of the being that defnes a woman is boxed for someone else to own.”

Women's stories have never spoken of rights over their own bodies. Needless to say, an Indian sage himself wrote the Kama Sutra. And ironically sex education has become a taboo in

India, one of the most populous countries.

“I am determined to change attitudes. I want people to stop looking at sex as punishment or a weapon of war. Women (or men for that matter) are not property. We have the right to belong to ourselves. I want us to learn from the wisdom of ancient Indian sages who wrote about the importance of pleasure and its beauty as the path to spiritual attainment.”

“We tell many stories about the good women. The moment you have a woman who stands up for herself, we judge her; she is a fshmonger and a nuisance. The stories we tell and the stories we silence often say a lot about who we are.”

To the 61-year-old sexually positive mythologist and storyteller, the reading of Kamasutra, a comprehensive ancient treatise on sex, Pleasure and relationships was a coincidence, almost 20 years ago. Anand was irritated to fnd that the novels she studied as part of her advanced English course at LSR Delhi were often written by white men. There were no Indian stories in the curriculum, let alone stories written by and for Indian women. David Lawrence’s book Lady Chatterley’s Lover(published in 1928) was ponderous at best, lacking depth and holistic understanding of a female body These stories were “predictable, only listed scandalous afairs and rough sex.”

This led Anand to the Kamasutra, the deeper she delved into its world, the more she noticed how Indians steered clear of stories that spoke of a woman’s right to her body. “The book is written for men: how many hours should they spend getting a massage or how should they decorate their bedroom?” But it is only the second section in which the author addresses both men and women.” 20 years later, Anand has made a pioneering efort to expand the Kamasutra and breaking jaded stereotypes about intimacy that it promotes. Before her Instagram, aimed at making make sex more accessible went viral, she published a book “ The Art of Seduction” in 2017, a book positioned as a guide to good sex in the 21st century . Five years later, the hateful comments are still an endless barrage, often aimed at her age.

“To this day I still receive death threats. There are always people telling me to think about my death and do puja instead of talking about sex.” fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion fashion 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