a lover with a penis like a bendy toy
a man who can place his legs behind his ears and keep them there no matter what else is going on
the acrobatic skills of a circus artist
the ability to orgasm while doing the splits

But the illustrations belie the true worth of this book. The Kama Sutra might belong to another age and continent but it continues to speak to us. It reminds us that sex in the 21st-century doesn't have to be like fast food. It teaches us several worthwhile lessons, the most important of which is making time for love. Sure, the book was written for the leisured classes, but doesn't time seem to be the biggest problem for today's overstressed lover?

The Kama Sutra was written between the first and fourth century AD by an elderly Indian sage and was introduced to the west by Victorian explorer, Sir Richard Burton. He translated the book in 1876 but it remained illegal in Britain until it was published in 1963, when it sold like hot cakes.

Only a third of the book deals with the erotic. It describes 64 sexual arts - that is eight different ways of making love multiplied by eight different positions within each of these ways. (If you can do them all you were born with tentacles, not limbs, and are missing your vocation.)

In the Kama Sutra, sex is divine union - a celebration of the act of creation. Making love was only a sin if you did it badly. My, how times have changed . . . According to the Kama Sutra, you must do whatever it takes to spend time on a lovefest that will have both of you whimpering with exhaustion. Preparation is essential: sprinkle the love room with rose petals, dowse the bed with perfumes and burning incense, have your handmaidens drown your skin in perfumed oils and keep aphrodisiacs, such as onion syrup, to hand. Camel milk and honey will give your man marathon erections and prepare him for your piece de resistance, the Hanging Posture; 'the woman lies face downwards and the man fixes cords to her hands and feet and raises her by means of a pulley fixed to the ceiling. He then lies under her, holds the other end of the rope in his hand and lets her down, so that he can penetrate her. He raises and lowers her until he ejaculates.'

ivillage uk

Deciphering the Kama Sutra