In the course of our lifetime, all we do is crave for companionship. It drives our emotions, perspectives, and the need to make our life worthy of living. Saikat Majumdar’s recent novel, The Remains of the Body is not just a story about people exploring sexuality. It also cultivates the different ideas of relationship they build by relying on pleasure, freedom and where or how all of them get restricted. Cis/het men often fail to understand the fundamentals of queer literature. It comes with the conditioning which is based on conclusions and not on understanding. Yet, if read by breaking the conditioning we are pushed to adopt, queer literature holds the ability to wash away the linings of gender. This particular work of Saikat Majumdar made the man in me hard and melted the woman that likes to come out of me by coating my body with warmth, shivers and excitement.
The story revolves around three friends, Avik, Kaustav and Sunetra. While Avik and Kaustav happen to be childhood buddies, Sunetra is the person who works as the trigger factor. She allows both the men to understand their choices. The story has been told by an observer who manages to know the bits and pieces of these three interconnected individuals. It is easy to write a steamy novel with repetitive graphic sex making the book a source of quick orgasm. What perfumes readers is when they get to devour the sexual tension between characters by keeping love and lust in homeostasis. It does not exhaust the readers and elevates the orgasm of a thought more than what is so usual. The writer succeeds in putting a seed of the intention of the book. The titration of bisexuality complements the same sex tension and vice-versa. The steam of the story/characters condenses and rains. Subsequently, drenching the reader irrespective of gender, class, caste or race.
The somatic growth of the story allows the readers to be with the body of the characters. The words, on the other hand, magnify the mind for those who want to know the psyche behind the culture of sensuality and sensitivity. Most of us are not fond of going beyond the body. Thus, the author establishes a common origin wherein we get to understand the consequence of touch to a very molecular level. So, the author makes lust appear with absolute reality. The body hair, erect nipples, radiant thighs etc., are often used to define the content of the mind. At the same time, the constricted hands of marriage, constituents of friendship, emotional vulnerability of the characters help in creating a definition of body. The torment inside Kaustav is often found in people who struggle to commit to their own choices. So, when he feels the touch of Sunetra, he is afraid to accept his own emotion. Her touch mostly overpowers his feeling towards Avik, his growing bulge and also the visuals of his naked body. It makes the reader look beyond a single choice of an individual. The tension possesses the power to haunt and seduce the reader.
In the context of most notorious books, fantasies take an upper hand over their source. So, in the book, Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan, the author graphically develops the image of breasts, orgasm and the saliva dripping of their mouths. The same happens in the books of Marquis de Sade or Henry Miller. In this book, the author does not allow his own visuals about sex take the upper hand. So, even the Avik and Sunetra’s romance outside and around marriage reveals the discomfort in their marital life more than the lustrous thought of multiple partners. As human beings, we are fond of provoking our own thoughts, but a late orgasm is the result of good literature. The fantasies of these three individuals describe how people discover their own sexual choices in real life. Despite the moral constructs around our fantasies, the author subtly screams how if we do not break these heavy walls, everything else is going to stop us from telling and imagining them.
The author’s idea of marriage is that of an ideal individual. The society does not work to embrace a kind of marriage that ideal individuals keep before us as thinkers or readers. We are libertines when it comes to relationship. To keep a single relationship fertile, we work on it by exhausting our very self. And if we let our thoughts pass through monogamy, the entire act is referred to as perversion. The book does not offer a conclusion, but every reader wants to have one. So, in this book, Avik, Kaustav and Sunetra behave as libertines mostly do. It should be the only way to explore our deepest secrets.
The Remains of the Body is not a manual on queer literature and behaviour. It simply is a juicy story and like blood, the story moves through our veins and arteries. We have to feel what the story does to us. That would be the answer to all our questions. It is a kind of love that wears a leather thong.
