To learn Indian sexual practices from the Ananga-Ranga is one of the most pleasurable ways to pass the time. The Ananga-Ranga, an erotic instruction text written a thousand years after the Kama Sutra, provides a number of ways through which a married couple can renew and even keep the excitement and thrill in their marriage.
As with all things that are done repeatedly, satiety becomes a problem. Familiarity breeds contempt, repetition breeds boredom. This is the same with love-making. When done in the same way, the same pace, the excitement and passion burns out, pleasure escapes and the sexual need becomes little more than memory.
This is basically what the Ananga-Ranga problematizes and addresses. To keep a married couple together, both must work at introducing spice into their lives, most especially into their sex life. When the novelty wears off and the flames of passion die back to a steady glow, great love manuals of the East like the Ananga-Ranga encourage men and women to perfect a variety of sexual techniques. Learning different sexual techniques is one way to keep the boredom from reaching the bedroom. Bring back that element of surprise, that sense of breathless wonder. Every time is the first time. The passion must leave both man and woman smoldering.
Kalyana Malla, author of the book, sees monotony as the primary reason for a husband or a wife to give in to temptation or for the other to be driven by jealousy. He believes it is rarely that both individuals inside a marriage love each other equally. There must always be the other one that loves more than his or her partner does. Thus, the other is always open, willing to be seduced by passionfor someone else.
The Ananga-Ranga offers a very apt advice to our time. Knowing full well how fights and squabbles often happen, what causes them, and how some of them may be attended to, can be the first steps in curing the boredom, especially if these often spring from problems in the marital bed. By educating themselves, married couples can and will know how to give as well as receive sexual pleasure. With this, man and woman ensure that their relationship, their marriage is solid, that monotony is far from happening.
One technique is for the man to lift the girl by passing his elbows under her knees. He can enjoy her as she hangs trembling with her arms forming a garland around his neck. This coupling is called Janukurpura, the Knee Elbow.
Another technique is when the woman buries her face in the pillow and goes on all fours like an animal. The man can have sex with her from behind as though he were a wild beast. This position is Harina, the Deer.
When straightening her legs, the woman grips the mans penis like a stallion, it is Vadavaka, the Mare. This coupling is not easily done and must be learned through practice. If lying with her face turned away, the woman offers the man her buttocks and he presses his penis into the vagina or what Malla calls the house of love. This variation is called Nagabandha, the coupling of the Cobra.
To learn Indian sexual techniques, even a few, from the Ananga-Ranga, may provide just the perfect bit of surprise, challenge and thrill missing when the couple find themselves in between the sheets.