States of the Body Produced by Love
Nisha Ramayya
Ignota Books
A vibrant amalgamation of poetic mythical feminine love, States of the Body takes the reader on a remarkable pathway comprising of poetry, illustrations, and essays spanning experiences from the United Kingdom to India and all spaces between. Nisha Ramayya uses the lens of her British-Indian heritage and diasporic identity to influence a book that is both original and compelling, her poetry underpinned by the etymology of Sanskrit and Tantric philosophy to develop an understanding of the complexities of interpersonal love, relationships, and identity.
It opens with an ode to the first five of the ten Mahavidya Goddesses, highlighting the fascinating story of the creation of the Mahavidyas through the story of Satī and Shiva: Satī concentrated her power on tapas, the religious austerity that sears mind and soul with purifying heat. But her tapas was so powerful that she lit a fire inside her body and burned to death from within. Satī’s hollow ash-filled corpse remained upright as a pillar to her father’s mistake: ‘You cannot live without performing sacrifice but I am the sacrifice.’ Here and elsewhere, Ramayya’s vivid prose rejuvenates old myths with contemporary resonance.
The book goes on to explore the linguistics of Sanskrit and how the ancient language influences modern-day Hinduism. She also discusses how deeply she connects with the language, stating that ‘this language does things to me, this language that speaks you more than you know.’ This section is followed by notes on Tantra and its troubled history, with Ramayya countering its ‘slipping into mainstream South Asian and Western cultures’ with the assertion of its ‘radical otherness’ as ‘India’s darkest, most irrational element’.
Chapter Three explores the ten states that love imprints on the body, among them joy of the eyes, pensive reflection, indifference to external objects, fainting away and death. It takes on the full spectrum of life from joy to death and how Ramayya’s experience of losing her grandmother questions and adds to the yearning of her return to India. To conclude the book, Ramayya highlights the last five Mahavidyas goddesses, bringing the work of the opening section to fulfilment.
It is difficult not to like the author with her unpretentious style of writing and ambition for incorporating a multitude of structural approaches. While this structural complexity may prove difficult to follow for some readers, States of the Body Produced by Love remains a beautifully written exploration of love from its place in mythicism to the full cycle we experience though birth and death.
—Etzali Hernández