Last Saturday Tania and I watched an Indian movie called 'Fire'. Its not new, made in 1996, but it sparked a lot of controversy in India when it was made. Basic plot:
Indian couple, an arranged marriage, where the wife is infertile. The husband is of a particular sect of Hinduism that thinks sex should only be for procreation. His swami (priest) suggests that he embrace celibacy to bring him closer to god(s). This also entails the practice of surrounding himself by things he finds tempting and then resisting to touch them. The husband puts this to practice with his wife so anytime he feels horny he has her lay down next to him and he refuses to touch her. This goes on for 13 years.

Husband younger brother is in love with a Chinese girl living in India. She's modern and carefree, only wanting a sexual and emotional relationship with the young man but turning down his marriage proposal. He is in love w/her so he continues seeing her and despite all this goes through with an arranged marriage with an Indian girl named Seta.

Seta is brought into the unhappy household with a husband who openly doesn't like her and who has sex with her quickly and roughly (her virginity is taken in the most cold, un-affectionate way possible) while admitting to her that he loves another. She would have given the relationship a go.

Longstory short the two sister-in-laws fall in love with each other and drama ensues. One of the themes the older, barren woman talks about is how she is so unused to having desire, its alien for her. Her husband and his swami believe that it elevates someone spiritually to forego desire, but she believes that it is desire that makes us live and makes life worth living.

That got me thinking about desire and the role it plays in my life. I wouldn't know what its like to be in her situation, I could only imagine. My life has been full of desire, still is I suppose. What would it be without it? I don't think I agree with the swami, or the Buddhist idea, that the abandonment of desire brings about the ultimate human experience, i.e. the absence of experience (?). Wouldn't I just be dead, or comatose If I never had any desires? Or would I be completely satiated and need of nothing? But if I don't need anything then what about beautiful things like love, company, and laughter? Would life be worth living?

As a Christian we gain our lives by loosing them, meaning the total surrender of a life to God is what brings the true life, which is the true prize where the old life is a sort of fool's gold I suppose.

And how do you live without desire? Never wanting or being wanted. Interesting...maybe it would be liberating, but perhaps also very lonely.

Labels: Desire