Poet Sued By Ex-Cop For Loving God

File under: Sex and God

Celebrated Bengali poet Sunil Gangopadhyay is being investigated by police after ex-cop Bhibhuti Bhusan Nandy filed a complaint after he read passages of Gangopadhyay's autobiography in a newspaper. The passages in question reveal Gangopadhyay's sexual arousal toward his Saraswati murti.

We feel pretty bad for Nandy. His delicate and fragile spiritual conceptions must have taken years to develop. To see it all crash in a heap when exposed to real devotion is all too much for the psychotically-devout and tradition-bound bhakta.

But it's all par for the course for Gangopadhyay. A Calcutta newspaper office was picketed two years ago after Gangopadhyay wrote about the sex life of the famous Calcutta saint Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Almost all of the Ramakrishna devotional community is under the impression—due to the saint's entrenched hagiography—that Ramakrishna was a pure and pious godman with absolutely no sex life. But since the publication of "Kali's Child," by American religious studies scholar Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, the picture of a slightly wacky yet sexually undefiled saint is giving way to a richer portrait, one which includes the unique and powerful sexual dimensions of Ramakrishna's spiritual life and practice.

And we can totally relate to that! The first time we made it with Ma Kali, we were so completely yet pleasantly ravished that we spent most of the next day lounging in the garden of our guru's ashram. When he walked out and found us lying in the path, he chuckled, swung on his heels and left us to savor the afterglow.