‘How India Loves’ by Rituparna Chatterjee maps changing ideas of love

Life is fluid, love even more so, writes Rituparna Chatterjee in her exploration of modern intimacies. Her book, ‘How India Loves: Love Stories from the World’s Largest Democracy’, is a compilation of stories gathered from across India over a four-year period. These are intimate stories of love and lust, happiness and heartbreak, violence and anger, fetishes and frivolities that define relationships in a country that is increasingly flirting with change even as it remains wedded to tradition.

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Through reportage and personal accounts, the book documents the arc of these relationships, from teenage angst to loneliness, from the singles to swinger couples, from jubilee marriages to open unions, from extramarital relationships to experimental sex, dating trends and therapy jargon, and much more.

Chatterjee’s previous book, too, delved into the personal terrain, but stemmed from her very own. ‘The Water Phoenix’ was a delicate memoir about child sexual abuse, growing up and healing from that dark space. In ‘How India Loves’, the canvas is wider and larger as it moves from the swanky mansions of South Delhi to Mumbai high-rises to the slums of Kolkata. We hear various unheard voices and untold stories, that the author says, came on like a tsunami.

There is the domestic help who threw her alcoholic husband out of her life, with the full backing of her mother-in-law. There is the 80-year-old seeking divorce, fed up as she is with years of emotional abuse, though her not-so-empathetic family feels threatened “because dida-dadu were a unit” and the collapse of their marriage threatens their idea of morality. Then there is the Bollywood actor who loves his wife but doesn’t understand why his fleeting shoot romances should pose a problem to the notion of loyalty. Each story reflects the churn happening in Indian relationships. As Chatterjee says, these stories know no caste, class, gender or other boundaries that dictate our lives.

Chatterjee keeps her journalistic decorum intact as she navigates these personal sites without being too intrusive — even when she treads the uncomfortable territory of intimate partner violence and BDSM, of pornography and its attendant kinks and fetishes, and of alienation, abandonment and loneliness.

Chatterjee is acutely aware of relationships and their interplay with mainstream societal views. In India, love, after all, isn’t simply a bond between two persons. It involves families, friends, neighbours, lawmakers and now technology, which makes love everybody’s business. In a world of dating apps and anonymous trysts, the rules may have changed, but the insecurities remain firm and familiar.

One of the interesting chapters is the glossary of terms that have come to define modern dating. While terms like situationships and ghosting are fairly common, what pray is roaching? It means when the person you are dating is hiding the fact that they are dating someone else, and you discover there are many more. Pocketing suggests you are still in the pocket, but not yet right or good enough to be “presented” to others. And there is benching, a decidedly sporting and techie term now infiltrating relationships.

Amid the array of stories, some feel a bit fragmentary, perhaps alluding to the nature of modern-day intimacies. At times Chatterjee abandons the observer role and plays social commentator, making the narrative a bit pedantic. But overall, the book takes an exhaustive look at the changing ideas and expectations of love in India. It asks some crucial questions, for which there are no easy answers. What it does offer is a valuable perspective on relationships in India and an indication of where they may be heading.

— The writer is a Bengaluru-based contributor