What Excites Us!

Ep 75: Mythic Love True Desire with Nishita Rao

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Transcript:

Ep 75 - Mythic Love True Desire with Nishita Rao

[00:00:00] Gwyn: At one point in history calling yourself heterosexual meant that you were perverse? Insatiable desire for sex that wasn't about reproduction, that's what was heterosexual, and that was a diagnosis.

[00:00:14] This podcast is about sex and sexuality, so please only listen if you are an adult without kids or other ears around that cannot, or do not consent to sensitive language and content. Thanks.

[00:00:28] ​

[00:00:33] Speaker: This whole episode lives in that space, that space where we've decided normal is the thing that is what we do. But it's really only a particular moment with particular people and particular interests. Everything else gets pushed to the edges, right?

[00:00:53] My guest today is Nishita Rao. She is the founder of Pillow Talk with Nixie, which she describes as an insurgent platform challenging colonial architectures across sex education, research, therapy, consultation, counseling, and publishing.

[00:01:13] She really, she's all that.

[00:01:15] Her academic background is in neuroscience and biotechnology, but her work spans, let me try this. All right, I've just ... I, I've tried this three times. I'm just gonna read it. Sexual sciences, neuroscience, anthropology, molecular biology, behavioral sciences, political science, linguistics, dance ethnography, ethnomusicology, and paleoclimatology. She's also been trained extensively by the US VA Health Administration about trauma and Violence Against Women International on forensics and criminology.

[00:01:56] She holds an equitable care certification in sex worker affirming trauma-informed care. I know that she's also an artist, and today we are talking about fictophilia.

[00:02:10] At least that's where we start. Which is attraction to fictional characters, anime, gods, objects, and also we throw in Sufi poetry, 15th century Telugu love songs, and the very, very loaded question of what gets to be real.

[00:02:31] Welcome, Nishita Rao to What Excites Us. I'm so excited to have you here

[00:02:38] Nishita Rao (she/her): Thank you so much for having me here as well.

[00:02:41] Gwyn: You are an incredible wealth of knowledge. You talk about so many different things when I was looking over your webpage. I was completely overwhelmed with all amazing things that we could talk about. I wanna start with fictophilia, that's a really cool topic and not a lot of people are talking about it.

[00:03:02] you give us like brief overview and then we'll dive a little bit deeper?

[00:03:07] Nishita Rao (she/her): Absolutely. The terms that are being toyed around with is fictophilia, fictosexual, fictoromance. Yeah, so these are the terminologies that are often played around with. In a nutshell it basically refers to if you exist in this plane of reference, if your lover or your beloved exists in a different plane of reference that is not within your perception, then that individual or that particular romance would be termed as fictophilia.

[00:03:43] In a sense to say that this beloved belongs to an ontologically different plane of reference as you. It could be someone that is a fictional character, Mickey Mouse maybe, someone has an attraction to an anime character, or perhaps something on the lines of let's suppose, like someone having an attraction to God, someone playing around with objects. There's an actual term for that called objectophilia, wherein you have a strong attraction to things like staircases. Yeah, so basically there are plenty of variants in this plane which need not refer to a human-human interaction. But whenever we talk about love, romance, we generally talk about human-human interaction.

[00:04:36] That's what we term as interpersonal relationships. But that is a wide, I would say, avenue of experiences that we technically do not consider in the world of academia and we should actually. Because these are as real as it can get. It feels as real as it can get. It ranges from being attracted to puppets, to objects, to anime, to pop artists, to characters, to figures in movies, or even to objects.

[00:05:11] And so there are variations in your attraction these that we call it. And there are different ways of actually looking at it that way. So that is a brief introduction of what this world looks like.

[00:05:26] Gwyn: I'm imagining lot of the people who identify this way, identifying with a specific thing that they're attracted to or sexually interested in. Is that the case or is it like a wide array? Like you mentioned puppets, like a theme or is it a specific character? And I know not everybody is a monolith. I'm just thinking like generally what is more often seen?

[00:05:54] Nishita Rao (she/her): Generally speaking, as far as my knowledge goes, it is a specific person, specific character, specific individual, or caricature of an individual or a puppet, or basically a specific type of god as well. Again, the experience that this individual has may not be the same experience another person would have had if they are facing the same kind of attraction to the same kind of character.

[00:06:19] Gwyn: Sure, that makes sense. When we talk about the color blue, right? We all identify that this is blue, right? But what is it that we are actually seeing as blue? Nobody can really know. So it strikes me that that would sort of be the same thing, that can't really understand what any specific person is feeling when they're feeling something except to sort of generalize out.

[00:06:44] Nishita Rao (she/her): Absolutely. Yeah

[00:06:46] Gwyn: Yeah. That's so cool. The whole thing is just so cool. I love it is recognized as a thing not as a pathology, right?

[00:06:58] Nishita Rao (she/her): Well, it was at one given time point closer to being classified as a pathology. That is especially when people term it as parasocial relationships or even the name itself when you're talking about fictophilia. We are referencing a fictional space as opposed to the reality that one might state that, "Oh, this is the normative and the other one is not the normative."

[00:07:26] And it has a bulk load etymology behind it and history behind it that at some given time point, the individual might be like, "Oh, I'm being pathologized against." There are a lot of people who feel it.

[00:07:41] It can also co-occur with your interpersonal relationships as well and can co-occur simultaneously. And, yeah, there's a wide range of it.

[00:07:53] Gwyn: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But I mean, being homosexual was also pathologized, right? And being kinky is still Yeah? I don't remember

[00:08:04] Nishita Rao (she/her): Well, at one given time point, heterosexuality was pathologized.

[00:08:08] Gwyn: Ooh, that's fun. Really?

[00:08:13] Nishita Rao (she/her): Yeah.

[00:08:14] It was considered to be perversive if you call yourself a heterosexual. That is an individual who has insatiable urge to go on having sex, especially at a time point when sex was codified as just for reproductive purposes. And those individuals were termed as heterosexual.

[00:08:35] Gwyn: That's so fascinating. I had no concept of that specific etymology. Okay, that's a whole nother conversation that I'm gonna write down because amazing. That's really, really cool. So tell me, are the folks who are having relationships with AI or with physical robots, do they fall under this category of fictophilia?

[00:09:04] Nishita Rao (she/her): I am unsure. Because AI relationships in itself is a new conversation that individuals are engaging with right now. It may fall under the same category, but at the same time, people are still conversing about how much of this relationship is something that is actually quote-unquote "real." You know how this terminologies keep coming back into question.

[00:09:31] Especially in a time when AI is just giving you things that you would like to hear. It's just mimicking things that you would want to hear. Would that really be considered as a real relationship? But-- So those are the conversations that are happening in the background while there is another set of conversations about ethics and bioethics.

[00:09:52] And in this day and age of generative AI and the amount of ecological warfare that is going on with respect to having AI in the country in the first place. Does that really play a huge amount of the role when it comes to choosing your partner and choosing to have that kind of a relationship with AI?

[00:10:16] Or is it that when you're having an AI girlfriend or a boyfriend or something like that, do you also contribute and you technically do contribute to some ecological or rather climate-oriented issues? But that is all another set of conversations, and on the opposite end, we still have this conversation about fictophilia in itself wherein a lot of people still stand by the statement of "Oh, fictophilia is not real, it's fictional, the only real thing is interpersonal." So those individuals are bound to kind of relate to AI in a very pathologized fashion, and saying that if you're having an AI partner, then it is fictional, that you have to be pathologized.

[00:11:00] But I would technically do call it, or rather classify it under fictophilia. There is a, again, a degree of belonging, relationship that is maintained. It's an interpersonal relationship, or rather it has those interpersonal elements without having to need to navigate life with another human being. So it has the same elements. It makes you feel like you belong without having to navigate through another person, which often gets complicated in today's days and ages.

[00:11:35] So to me, I would say yes. If it were up to me, I would definitely call it as a fictophilia attachment. But I don't think I am an authority in this area of AI to kind of give it that classification yet.

[00:11:54] Gwyn: Fair enough. Fair enough. Where are these conversations happening, the the intellectual versions of these conversations? Who are coming up with these terms and deciding whether or not it's okay or you know that sort of thing?

[00:12:09] Nishita Rao (she/her): Unfortunately, it's not happening from within the community. It's often happening amongst, the purveyors of sexual health discourses, the ones who have always decided what is morally, socially, or sexually healthy for every individual to have. And now that is a different conversation altogether because these are the individuals who create norms, normatives, and classify individuals within those brackets.

[00:12:38] If it were coming from within the, family, within the discourse, within the ace aro literature or people who do say that they have fictophilia attachments, people who do say that they have AI partners, if this is something that is coming from them, then the language used would not be this in nature.

[00:12:57] Most of the conversations that I am privy to in these areas are about, "Oh my God, AI is going to take over and people are not going to want to meet or rather bond with other human beings, and that's going to be the end of the humankind." And that's the line in which those conversations head down. And it's a very-- Sorry to say, it's a very theologically and Christian-oriented, to constantly assess people based on mating strategies and the fact that they have to further the human civilization. And again, yeah, it has elements of, eugenics in it, embedded in it.

[00:13:40] Gwyn: I definitely wanna come back to that. But before we do, I can hear, I don't know naysayers or whatever. I can hear people saying, "That's very immature," because so many of us as very young people have crushes on whatever characters we see on TV or cartoons or you know that sort of thing. And then most of us don't as we get older. ... That feels too simplistic to say that that's immature. How would you address that?

[00:14:13] Nishita Rao (she/her): A few years ago, we had this context of again if sex is not for reproductive purposes, then you're considered perversive. Then you are, pathologized as a heterosexual individual. At some point in that discourse, it became more on the lines of, "Oh, if you're engaging in same-sex activities, that is not contributing to furthering the human race, hence you are perversive now. You are now pathologized." Then the discourse went more and more towards gender non-conforming people to basically transgender individuals, intersex individuals. Basically, any individual that does not fit within the binary terminologies wherein procreation becomes a norm, wherein amatonormativity is the standard.

[00:15:06] If we have situations like that existing, as long as we do have this concept of amatonormativity around, the more we are going to see such normative biases coming up. The individuals who still engage in this discourse of human-human relationship is normal, having an AI girlfriend or boyfriend or partner or having crushes on ucharacters or anime, all of this is ridiculous, and you're being childish and grow up, and these are basically people who are still trying to force down that amatonormative label down your throat.

[00:15:48] And for centuries, human existence has never, never obeyed this amatonormative idea that, oh, there exists a man, there exists a woman they get married they have two children, and that's the normal. Not really. We have centuries of human existence and civilizations and stories that speak of varieties of interpersonal relationships, varieties of relationships that are not even bound in human-human relationships.

[00:16:23] There are so much of intersectional relationalities occurring in these spaces that we don't really give that much of importance to. Why? Because there is now this new label of sexual health, that there is this healthy approach to sex, and that has to do with a certain type of interpersonal sex.

[00:16:44] Gwyn: Yeah. So basically it's either black or white and there's no nuance, just not right. Okay. Let's go back to when you first started talking, you mentioned being romantically attracted to Gods. Expand on that please.

[00:17:03] Nishita Rao (she/her): There are two ways I can expand on this, and these two will take us through two sets of literature and two different societies altogether. They may or may not have mingled. I'm not sure about it. Maybe they could have. It's been centuries. But they have evolved independently and have preserved their traditions.

[00:17:27] The first one that I'd like to bring up is the Sufi school of thought. This is the Persianate Sufi school which we call as Mazhab-e-Ishq. Loosely translates to the School of Love, and their teaching is around this aspect of there exists two kinds of love. One is Ishq-e-Haqiqi which is the true love, which is reality, which as real as it can get. And guess what? That is the love that you feel with a beloved who is not in the ontologically same realm as you. The Khuda, the God, that you feel this love towards this individual whom you could feel Ishq-e-Haqiqi to, and it's described as reality.

[00:18:23] What a change. On the other hand, we have  Ishq-e-Majazi, which is more on the line of human-human interactions, which can get as close to... We are trying to take elements of Ishq-e-Haqiqi in expressing Ishq-e-Majazi that is a human-human attraction, but we can never get close to that reality, to that love, to that, pure love that we feel, the true love that we feel.

[00:18:53] It's very interesting, this whole literature, all the poets, Sufi poets, including Jalaluddin Rumi as well, who came out of this school, who spoke in these ways. The one that I'm specifically looking into right now is Ahmad Al Gazali's work. It's fascinating to kind of observe a space wherein the reality is composite of this beloved who is not in your realm. Whereas any human-human interaction you can have can never get close to this beloved.

[00:19:35] It is also important to note here that the beloved is Khuda, it's God, it's Allah. And when you're talking about this, beloved or lover as well, they use the term interchangeably. There is no other reality other than Khuda or Allah. That is how they perceive it as. So if they're perceiving his presence itself as reality then no matter how much of interaction you may have with other human beings, it's not gonna come as close to this. It is also to take a pause here and note that there is another set of literature in Islam that vehemently opposes Sufism and relegates Sufis to the corners of their society.

[00:20:23] They were ambushed. They were targeted. They were distanced off and I'm again not trying to start any, war over here right now. But I'm also trying to understand this or rather give it a fictophilia read in order to say that there were individuals back then, all the way dating back to 10th century or eighth century, who had felt this kind of love. And of all the terms they could come up with, they came up with a term that meant Haqeeqat, that meant Haqeeqi, real. Which is fascinating because today in today's world, we call it fictional. We don't call it real. We call it fictional. It's a huge, it's an interesting journey to take once we go down that literature.

[00:21:09] The other one I'd like to highlight, and this is my current research right now, this comes from Southern India. Most of the poems written in this space is in Telugu literature, but they're inspired heavily from Sangam literature, which is an ancient, Tamil-based poetry, especially a version of that poetry called Akam, which deals with love and internal desires and all of that.

[00:21:40] The Telugu literature takes it one step ahead wherein they say, "We're not just in relationship with God. We're not just in love with God. We are having sex with God. Having erotic desire with God. This God, when he's approaching me, I'm on my periods. Should I even tell him, that I'm on my periods?"

[00:22:02] Because, well, we know we had like a huge period-related. Basically, women were not allowed to have any contact with other men during the periods in this area. And this chap goes on to write that, "Should I even tell the person that I'm on my period? I don't want him to stop touching my thigh. He's touching my thigh. Should I even tell him?"

[00:22:26] Like, it's fascinating the breadth of work that goes into this. This Telugu landscape of literature was quite a lot banned, I would say. Like, for several centuries, every century something or the other gets banned. But, the way in which it survived is also interesting, and the way in which it is written is also interesting.

[00:22:52] While the Persian literature maintains the same gender as the individual is, in Telugu literature, the poets reimagine themselves as the woman. They reimagine themselves as the lover, the wife, the courtesan of that beloved, and they start having an affair. Sometimes if they are the courtesan, they'll sneak out and have an affair. And it's a fascinating set of poems that are being preserved even till date.

[00:23:24] And the manner in which it's preserved is because it is part of the cultural heritage. And the minute it became part of the cultural heritage it got coated with what we call as Bhaktification, which is basically you are trying to take a corpus of literature that not have had any devotional aspect to it, but just because it mentions the name of the god, you call it devotional.

[00:23:50] And once you call it devotional, nobody's gonna touch it. It becomes part of the cultural heritage. Nobody's gonna touch it. It got codified as devotional, but it still got preserved, and it's still being performed today. Songs that were written in 10th century, 11th century are still being platformed today, are still being danced to. There are dance drama traditions built around them even today.

[00:24:21] Gwyn: That's just absolutely beautiful. Like that's really overwhelmingly beautiful for me. When you were talking about the Sufis, you mentioned Allah, so that stems from the Muslim Abrahamic.

[00:24:35] Nishita Rao (she/her): Yes

[00:24:36] Gwyn: Tell us just a little bit more background about the other ... Is that a Hindu-based with the multitudes of Gods or --

[00:24:46] Nishita Rao (she/her): This is back when we did have or rather we did share Gods across the region, but we would call them by different sects as opposed to the religion. The term Hinduism per se did not exist until nineteenth century, was predominantly first used by the Britishers. even when referencing someone as Hindustani, were actually referencing the Muslims of the land, not really the Hindus of the land.

[00:25:23] So it's a complicated classification of languages and religions all mishmoshed and, you know, probably deliberately so. But at some given time point Muslims started referring to themselves as Muslims and Hindu was up for grabs and they just went with it. But when we speak of the sect, basically this is the Vaishnava sect of individuals that I'm talking about. They worship versions of the Lord Vishnu, specifically Krishna, and each individual has had a different version of Krishna, or rather a different kind of relationship said Krishna. I would say, in comparison to the rest of the Gods as such Krishna is not like the Abrahamic Gods or even like the other Gods of Indian theology. In so far to say that he's, has like 16,000 wives that we all know about. Seems to keep them all satisfied. I forgot the number of mistresses that he has. He doesn't come from a royal background and yet seems to be involved in king-making aspirations and involved in regional debates around, oh, who gets to have the kingdom and not. At some point, he does marry into a family wherein he does get an army and he is able to lead the people, but he's a cowherd. He herds cows. He hangs out with the milkmaids. He sings songs. He dances. He frolics around. He's known to be polyamorous and women like him for that. And oddly speaking, many of these individuals have seen Krishna as the one god to have a relationship with.

[00:27:21] Gwyn: Sure. Sounds like a stud muffin i've seen pictures. Okay, enough of thevery poor cultural jokes that I have no business making. Qll right. is so cool. Can't even like, but I know a lot of your is around the decolonization of everything. And how important that is, and you brought up how this whole concept of normative sexuality as Christian-based. I'd like to talk about that a little bit more because yes, absolutely, but I never drew that line, that connection before you said it.

[00:28:07] Nishita Rao (she/her): Yeah. For much of human history, we have existed in spaces of Vernacular sexualities. That is to say that we are constantly negotiating in our space and time with the kind of politics that we face, with the kind of societies that we live in, with the language, with the religion, with the culture. And we negotiate our gender and sexuality into this complex. And that's the gender and sexuality that we embody in that space and time.

[00:28:46] Yes, it's going to change if the society and culture also changes, and we are also able to change with that, and that is how we have constantly existed. There has never been a certain type of a lesbian. There has never been a certain type of a straight man.

[00:29:05] There has never been a straight woman. There has never been a transgender woman. There has never been a gay man. There is no ideal in any of this. And yet, when we speak about inclusion or inclusive spaces, and we try and create inclusive spaces, we create inclusive spaces for individuals who have already received visibility. These are individuals who already hold a space in society. What about the gay man who could never really, appear gay enough to warranty a space in your pride inclusion spaces?

[00:29:52] I'll give you an example. We speak a lot about coming out stories. It's bizarre from a Global South perspective. Because when we talk about identities in Global South, we talk about it from a communal standpoint. What is your identity with respect to whom? With respect to what? We never stop at what is your identity. There's always with respect to something. Okay, what is your identity with respect to languages? What is your identity with respect to music, with respect to art? You have different communal identities in these spaces.

[00:30:32] Similarly, when we talk about sexual attraction or romantic attraction attraction, firstly, we are talking only about these two things. We're not talking about the rest of the ones. We are not talking about the twenty different types of intimacies or even more that individuals can actually experience. We are only highlighting the two that we see has not just economic beneficiates, but also is beneficiary for the state.

[00:30:59] So those are the only two that we deal with. Now what about these individuals who exist in between in these liminal spaces? What about their visibility? Does it serve them if they are being visible? Maybe not. Maybe identifying as something, maybe being with particular kind of identity can probably result exposing yourself to more danger.

[00:31:25] Maybe there is the right to opacity, but do you get to decide what parts of you stay visible and what parts of you stay opaque? And when you're trying to demand visibility in these spaces, they're often being looked at from what is already visible and whether or not you fit into those spaces or not. So again, I'm not saying that this is only a Christian thing. This is the modern world's interpretation of what beings are legible to the state or not. What do I mean by that? Is that if you are legible to a state, that means you can be categorized. If you can be categorized, be legislated against. Either policies can be made for you policies can be made against you Our human relationships have never existed in spaces wherein it can be categorized. They weren't designed to be categorized.

[00:32:30] These were experiences that we go through in life. It may change over time. It may go from one different kind of an experience altogether to another different one in a different realm altogether. They were never meant to be legible.

[00:32:48] And let's say we are in this process of creating our bodies to be legible. In that process, we may showcase some attributes of ourselves that stay visible. What are the ones that we are hiding? What are the ones that we are relegating to the invisible end of the spectrum? What if they just stay invisible forever, and we never find out, and it just dies with us? So this is what I'm talking about when I'm dealing with trying to categorize individuals and ensure that these are the only categories that they have to kind of like enforce themselves into. The reason why I call them a very Western perspective is because for much of the Global South, after colonization, these topics were introduced to us as modernity.

[00:33:45] It is modern to be modest So if you are categorizing yourself in these binaries, it is actually considered modern in a post-colonial society for you to do that. if you were to go back to what your traditional knowledge bases talk about relationships, you're gonna get a far vast range of experiences

[00:34:11] Gwyn: Yeah. Yeah, that really And honestly, it's part of why I do this podcast, because if we don't language for what it is that we're feeling, we might not be able to identify what it is that we're feeling. there is nothing that is not normal. If it exists in you, it is normal. You know, not harming yourself, not harming other people, that's key. But still, if you have interests, desires, motivations, and you don't see yourself anywhere in the world, and in our very limited modern Western reality, we don't identify anything that, yeah, that can't be legislated. I hadn't really brought it down to that place, but that makes a lot of sense.

[00:35:09] And it, it, to me, it, goes back to people who are unhappy and therefore want other people's land, 'cause they can't think about anything else but getting better and feeling better about themselves. Whereas if they could feel comfortable in who they are and have satisfaction and fulfillment in their own beings, then it's entirely likely they, they wouldn't feel the need to steal all the things from all the people.

[00:35:37] Nishita Rao (she/her): Perhaps it also in respect of whether or not one is happy, it could also refer to greed. I mean, to be honest, much of the colonization across the world actually began because of the stock market. That companies were formed in order, and basically citizens of the colonized, the colonizer countries held stocks in the colonizing projects.

[00:36:07] So let's take up East India Company. It is a small minute company of around four to ten people in the main office based out of London. And the atrocities committed abroad, the number of deaths, the fact that, it just sucked the whole country's economy down to probably like two percent or three percent of the world's economy at that point. But who made the money? The people who held stocks abroad. Why? Because they were benefiting from this. So that's just one. You have the Dutch who were the ones who actually started this in the first place, the whole stock exchange thing. It all started there.

[00:36:55] Gwyn: agreed. I understand that I am supposing that I know the answer, and that is because that they were unhappy in some other thing. But I don't know. I don't see a whole lot of other reasoning. I am interested in what anybody else has to say about it, but yeah, that's my take.

[00:37:17] It is completely taken over this binary view, this way of the only way that we do things is the way that we say we do things, is everywhere. Like, there are very few cultures that at least some people aren't ascribing to that.

[00:37:34] Nishita Rao (she/her): And it's kind of hypocritical as well, you know? Because they came in with the idea that, "Oh, we are the savages, thus we need to be colonized." And that was the whole colonial project, that need to bring civilization to the savages. They never brought us any civilization

[00:37:55] Gwyn: No, that's a cover story. That was nonsense.

[00:37:58] Nishita Rao (she/her): A good story, yeah. And then they made us more savage-like when they enforced the binaries upon us. Before europe turned its eye to the rest of the world, they were trying colonial projects upon each other.

[00:38:15] Gwyn: i'm so fascinated in all of this, and I wish that we could go pre-history.

[00:38:21] I wish we could get to a place before writing, right?

[00:38:24] But I would love to know, I would love to have a concept of things that were happening before we were writing stuff down. Like, we can suppose, right? With the research into, like, stuff from the 10th century, we can that it was similar earlier than that. But there's no way to really know, unless there's oral histories, I suppose

[00:38:49] Nishita Rao (she/her): I'm glad you came to that by yourself 'cause I was waiting till you completed the question. For there has never been a set time point when written history has started in the world. Oh, this is it. This is when it starts. And this is when the whole civilization..." No, every culture has had their own histories with respect to written and oral histories. The unfortunate aspect being that much of the written history is accounted for, but the oral traditions are not.

[00:39:23] Rather, they just get pushed to the back end. Much of the history that I deal with or, the poems or the written work that I engage with actually existed as oral traditions until the 20th century. So I learnt these things as oral traditions. They were handed down in, like, songs.

[00:39:48] Were narrated in dance drama, so you would attend those areas, and you would learn the history of those people through those works that they would do. But that is the thing, that we never really had a pre-history of written... Like, it's sort of vague to engage with considering that, the Global South has had a rich history of oral traditions that have passed down for centuries.

[00:40:18] The Sufi literature was also, orally transmitted. At some point, someone decided to write it down, and it stayed written and then got translated again. But then, even the Telugu literature, the Tamil literature, everything was oral traditions. They are preserved by the community that composes it. And it's passed down word of mouth from the guru to the shishya, that is the teacher to the student, every generation.

[00:40:46] And yes, there is a degree to which you can see that the history has been sort of manipulated in those oral traditions, that you can actually see that, you can observe the changes. But I'm more concerned with not what is right or wrong in that history.

[00:41:08] I'm more concerned with, one, why are people composing this? What prompted them to write about this? And two, what went on in their minds? What did they feel when they were writing this? Finally, how was it received? Because when it is being received, you can actually see it being designated as too troublesome for the moral economy of the society or something that has to be preserved and given the cultural heritage mark.

[00:41:41] So that is what I'm more concerned with. Yes, historians generally associate with themselves with what is evidence-based and what is real work or not real. can't really have that in oral histories, per se. The kind of questions that you ask is kind of different in these cases.

[00:42:03] Gwyn: Yeah. I was thinking about European stuff 'cause that is what I am more familiar with, which makes sense. Also the that I listen to. And thank you for I appreciate it. I'm always curious about when it comes to oral traditions, like, how much of it is like the game of telephone, right?

[00:42:24] Where, where it changes a little bit, little bit, little bit, "Ooh, I wish I could go back to the first person who said this thing," which obviously I don't know how to time travel, so that's not happening. Where should we go from here, Nishita? Tell me

[00:42:40] Nishita Rao (she/her): Well, as the Rasa theory suggests, you have to first experience it. You have to taste what those emotions have to offer. You have to feel it for yourself. So this particular one, that I have in front of me today is, Mokku Chigurtha Dhara Dhana. It is written by, Annamacharya, who was a composer in 15th century, and also imagined himself as the lover of his beloved, Venkateshwara.

[00:43:17] And he imagined himself as his wife when he was writing these songs. So the setting of this particular song is that he has just had, or rather she has just had an exchange, a very romantic exchange with the partner and has encountered her, friends outside, and the friends are like, "What is that smell all over your, face? Is that a love letter left behind by the lover? Your eyes are exceptionally red." And there are so many things that they mention, like, for example, "There are some crescent-shaped lines on your chest. Are those the marks left by the fingernails of your lover? We see some perspiration, like beads of perspiration on your cheek. Is that from the love experience that you just had?" And I love this particular poem because it not only gives you, something like we would consider as evidences of relationship. That when we are having a relationship, we tend to take a picture, and that way a picture can speak a thousand words, and we can share that picture with other individuals around us. As an evidence as, "Look at this, we are in a relationship. We are in love."

[00:44:42] Here we have a similar kind of a thing wherein this individual has decide Annamacharya has decided to create a scene wherein there are evidences of his relationship with his lover. I'm gonna give you a snippet of how it sounds like. Again, I have not officially learnt this, so the song might be a little bit, here and there until I finish learning it.

[00:45:12] But I'm gonna give you a taste of how it sounds like ఈ ముకు చిగురుత హరమున ఎడనడ కస్తూరి నందెను భామిని విభునకు వ్రాసెన పత్రిక కాదు నాకు వ్రాసిన పత్రిక కాదుగా So these are how these songs kind of sound like and that would give you a taste of how these songs are platformed. And the breadth to which his experiences were.

[00:46:20] Gwyn: That was absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, and us, all of us.

[00:46:27] It could really like deeply feel that. So I like to end... First of all, I wanna say thank you so much. This is really amazing. I cannot wait to share this with folks. And I like to end the podcast by asking one final question, which is, Nishita Rao, what excites you?

[00:46:46] Nishita Rao (she/her): I think it's the quest. For a long time this bit of knowledge has been maybe deliberately hidden from us. But it's the quest to finally place the jigsaw puzzle together. I mean, I ended up labeling it as an asexual kink itself— 'cause I guess a lot of nerds feel that way. It's fantastic to be in that space to finally realize that, oh it's right there. It's been staring at me all along, and my God, I didn't believe it.

[00:47:21] Gwyn: Having the opportunity to get to know you just a little bit, so if any, if this stays in, we do a co-working session and we get to hang out once a week for a few hours and it's delightful. That answer totally makes sense to me.

[00:47:36] Totally makes sense to me. Yes, the quest, of course. The search for knowledge and for understanding, and that's a beautiful response. Thank you. And thank you again for coming on. This is so good. I'm really... This is just delightful. Thank you

[00:47:54] Nishita Rao (she/her): Thank you so much for having me as well.

[00:47:56] Gwyn: I really consider myself lucky that I have to listen to my episodes more than once because I always get something else out of it that I hadn't picked up the first time this one I'm gonna listen to again and again. I do love that level of academia. It intimidates the heck out of me, and it's so good.

[00:48:16] Please go follow Nishita. pillowtalkwithnixi.com you could go to Linktree, it's Linktree Pillow Talk with Nixi. She's also on Instagram using that handle, and Nixi for her is N-I-X-I, so Pillow Talk with Nixi will find her.

[00:48:36] If this is your jam or if you know other people whose this is their jam, please share it and please come talk to me. I'd love to have more of these conversations. The pieces where it intersperses art and academia. Where she sang to us, just absolutely, like truly, deeply beautiful. And this is how we get more of these conversations out, right?

[00:49:00] Because there's a level of sex and sexuality for everyone. So please share this with a friend. Please rate and review this. Please help spread the good word about how complex our sexualities are.

[00:49:15] No, I think that's probably it. You can come find me at whatexcitesus.com. As usual, links and good stuff are all in the show notes thanks for being a part of this conversation. Really, really, really. Talk to you soon.