Being a jolly good sport about sex

The difference between action (kriya) and sports (krida) in Sanskrit-based languages including Hindi is the addition of the consonant sound ‘r’. The word ‘leela’, too, means play, signifying complete freedom, something the spiritually minded give the tag ‘divine’. Ironically, Swedish, a Germanic language, has different words for play (spela) and action (handling), with ‘sports’ bearing the words ‘sporter’ and ‘idrott’. Ironically, because Sweden has become the first country to declare sex as a sport. The Vikings were always a jolly good sport about this kind of thing.

The European Sex Championship will start on June 8, spanning over six weeks with contestants engaging in sexual activities from 45 minutes to an hour every day, ‘depending on the duration of the matches’. Whether foreplay will be considered part of warm-up or the match proper needs clarity. Sex as sport (SaS) – as opposed to software as a service (Saas) – will be treated more like gymnastics rather than, say, football, where you score according to couple chemistry, sexual knowledge, endurance, etc. If sport is seen as war by other means, this is welding it to the other slogan, ‘Make love, not war.’ Mainstream sports pages and channels in our part of town are unlikely to cover the match reports. But get your visas processed now to catch this new spectator sport.