The New Yorker
The New Yorker
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‘The Married Kama Sutra’ Is A Hilarious Take On The Traditional Indian Text

Neville Bhandara

When one thinks of the Kama Sutra, one usually imagines erotica. After all, the book is credited with being one of the foremost and most thorough manuscripts on sexuality ever published—even if we did kind of discredit that theory earlier this year. But, as things go on the Internet, people do take the traditional and make it contemporary—and that’s exactly what two brilliant American cartoonists and satirists, Simon Rich and Farley Katz, have done.
Rich and Katz are both contributors to The New Yorker, and their hilarious adaptation of the traditional text, titled The Married Kama Sutra, has catapulted this sexual bible out of history and into the modern age.
Though they have stuck to traditional depictions, the series is about as erotic as a teaspoon. Instead of drawings depicting various sexual positions, The Married Kama Sutra instead depicts hilarious scenes of a typical marriage—where both partners have been together long enough that the spark has worn off and sex (if ever occurring) is infrequent. Traditional attire juxtaposed with modern influences (such as the dishwasher in the first cartoon) makes for some deliciously wicked humour.
Scroll down and try not to smirk, regardless of your marital status.

Click here to check out the complete The Married Kama Sutra series.

I. When the man passes gas in front of the woman, without so much as an apology, it is called “the shifting of the standards.”

II. When the man and the woman have eaten Indian food, and are too swollen with rice to make conversation, let alone love, it is called “the beaching of the whales.”

III. When the woman catches the man performing self-congress next to her in bed, and incredulously says “Really?” and then he just turns away and keeps going, it is called “the determined jackrabbit.”

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