Acharya Prashant recounts a story about a scriptural debate (Shastrarth) between Acharya Shankar and Mandan Mishra, a staunch dualist. After Mandan Mishra was vanquished, his wife, Bharati, intervened, stating that her husband was not fully defeated until she was also subjugated in the debate. She debated with Acharya Shankar for many weeks, and upon realizing she could not defeat him in argument, she began asking him questions about sex, knowing he was a celibate monk (Sanyasi) with no such experience. Even Mandan Mishra objected, calling it unfair, but Bharati argued that since sex is part of the entire experience of life, Acharya Shankar must have knowledge of it. Acharya Shankar conceded and asked for a month to learn about the subject. The speaker then describes what he calls a "fairy tale" that is often told about what happened next. According to this tale, Acharya Shankar found the body of a freshly dead king, left his own body to enter the king's, and experienced the "art of lovemaking" with the king's wives for a couple of months. He then returned to his own body, answered Bharati's questions, and was declared the winner of the debate. The speaker emphasizes that this story is surely a fairy tale and not what actually happened. The central point of the speaker's explanation is to not give this sexual aspect of the story disproportionate value. He highlights that this topic only came up at the fag end of a debate that had already continued for seventeen days. He criticizes the modern climate for ignoring what happened during those seventeen days and being very eager to know about the "climax" of the debate. This, he says, is like living lovelessly for 364 days and suddenly wanting to be very loving on the 14th of February, which is not possible. The speaker concludes by stressing that the topic of sex was acknowledged as something one must know "as well," but it was not the entirety or the most important part of the debate. He argues that we must first be curious about what took precedence before the topic of sex was introduced. The seventeen days of debate on other matters are far more important, and without understanding that context, a curiosity about the sexual phase of the debate is misplaced and will not lead anywhere.