Alphabets are now sexy. The memories of singing the Alphabet song (yes, including the ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’ version) and trying to scribble the letters within four lines takes away any iota of erotica that might have possibly been associated with them. And maybe you even took a calligraphy class later on in your life, but we doubt you got your letters to bend like this.

Malika Favre, a French artist based in London, however, thought otherwise. Thanks to her illustrations, the days of ‘A for Apple’ will become a distant memory and will be replaced by the more explicit ‘A for Arch’ version. The idea came to her when she was commissioned by Penguin Books US to illustrate the new Deluxe Classic Cover of the Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana. She started off by creating just the first seven alphabets and when she realised she liked what she had created, she went ahead and completed the series. Then, she did something even more bold--she got help from animators to turn her images into gifs!

”I am a French illustrator based in London,” she says trying to explain the essence behind her series. “My approach to illustration is about paring things down as much as possible. I try and get to the essence of my subject by using as few lines and colours as it needs to convey the core of the idea.”
With the help of this collection, let’s hope you learn some between-the-sheets moves even while you make damn sure you can spell all your dirty talk correctly, when quizzed.

If you have just been waiting for a way to learn up the sequence without having to sing it, view the entire illustrated alphabetised collection of Kama sutra positions right here.