the poetry of male beauty

It's not as if there are no beautiful men outside Odissi; it's just that I was never given the language to describe them

I've often written about how Odissi has given me a chance to enjoy womanly beauty in every shade, but very often I feel that Odissi is perhaps the only space where I have been able to freely enjoy the beauty of men.

It's not as if there are no beautiful men outside Odissi; it's just that I was never given the language to describe them. While growing up I heard countless Bollywood songs that described the heroine's beauty in poetic ways: tresses like dark clouds, peacock-like gait, petal-like lips, to name a few. The heroines however, sang no equivalents; the men were loved for their niceness, goodness, courageousness --- and many such unshallow qualities that had no physical manifestations.

And so all my life, these are the ways in which I sought to describe the men I desired (or desire the men I described): as good, nice, heroic, pleasant. The closest I ever got to describing their physical beauty was handsome, hot, sexy: fairly unpoetic words, all.

But Odissi gave me the language (and I don't mean just the words, but also their emotions) to really enjoy the poetry of male beauty: Krishna's eyebrows that remind of a snake's arched body, dangerous and enticing all at once. His gait, so unhurried and languid. The way his earrings dangle and touch his cheeks when he runs. The etched shape of his lips. Ram's raincloud-fresh face. His unstudied softness, always flitting about his small smile. The terrifying and powerful aloofness of Shiva; visible in his vigorous tandav dance that scares me and blisses him out.

There are as many men in Odissi as there are gods; rich contrariness and simple truths; so much pleasure, both complex and epidermal.

Is it that men in life aren't all of that, or is it that I just never found a language to fully appreciate their beauty?