Nitish Raj’s ‘Love in Modern Times’ is a collection of thought-provoking tales

Those three magical words that once held the assurance of eternal love and lifelong adherence, seem to have been degraded over the time. The piousness of those once auspicious words ‘I Love You’ has diminished amongst the youngsters today.

 Essentially highlighting this aspect of love and romance prevalent in the current times, ‘Love in Modern Times’ by a Literary Critic-turned-Author, Nitish Raj provides an insight into the pervasive mindset and wavering behaviour amongst the teenagers and youngsters in modern times. A collection of twenty short stories, the book intricately depicts simplistic facts that how such mindset has transformed the real meaning of love and merely reduced the beautiful experience of ‘true love’ to mere ambiguous experimentation of ‘so-called love'. 

 The stories perfectly align with the central theme of the book through a simple, expository, and introspective narrative.  Whereas the stories like ‘Love or Life’, ‘Independence Day’, and ‘A 30-Day Relationship’ are thought-provokingly interesting with articulately ingrained sensitive themes, all the other stories are equally riveting and carry powerful messages for the youngsters in modern times.

 Stories like ‘99’, ‘Adult Movies’, and ‘I can’t Marry You’ present conflicting thoughts and different perspectives and another side of the coin. While the stories like ‘I Hate You’ and ‘That Unnoticed Love’ are heartwarmingly beautiful with impactful punchlines, the stories ‘I Hate Myself’ and ‘Mirage of Love’ are simplistic with a ‘just fine’ mannerism. The story, ‘Love in Modern Times’,  despite its predictability, entices the readers to continue reading and enjoy the narrative.

While themes like guilt-ridden perturbed parents unaware of the child’s endurance to external factors and internal conflicts alike, and all arising due to the catastrophe of today’s approach to love are extremely sensitive, another story portraying a 10-year-old manipulatively complying with physical abuse in the process of helping out a friend seems unbelievably unnerving. ‘Please Tell Me My Fault’ has a strange familiarity with the situation and reflects the general mindset of youngsters in modern times, the story manages to leave the readers enraged and fiercely quizzical. ‘The Shabby Princess’ is a loving tale simplistically narrated and leaves the readers baffled through the protagonist’s inability to comprehend the complicated thought-process of his love interest and her unpredictability in life’s situations. Although a different end to the story could have enhanced the readers’ expectations in terms of gratification drawn out of a love story. The story that stands out is ‘Love or Life’ which inspires the readers through the character’s self-introspection and presents an important life lesson to choose life over despair. 

Beyond the heartaches, intense thoughts, life lessons, and heartening tales, there is a funnily interesting story like ‘My First Crush or First Love’ that gives the imagery of a light-hearted adorably comic movie feel.

Overall, the stories are engaging; however, improved editing would have allowed the readers to savour the moments in the tales instead of wanting to rush through at certain points. The stories compel the readers to contemplate the aspects of love and its degrading essence in today’s times.

The pious feeling of lifelong commitment and an assurance of eternal love has lost its way in the generations of today, and the quintessence of this felicitous sentiment is diminishing in the youngsters each day. Highlighting the aspects of this fluctuating and fickle-minded approach of the young generation when it comes to matters of love, the book is a perfect portrayal of the depreciating value of love among teenagers.

Quoting from the book, “Love gives you leverage to go beyond your limits”, and “When everything goes as expected, be ready to face the unexpected”, the heartwarmingly loving tales leave the readers wanting for more and even looking for sequels in certain stories. Each of these stories is thought-provokingly unique and even though the characters and the premise of every story differs, readers would be able to relate to the feelings expressed in most of them.

 ‘Love In Modern Times’ is most certainly “An attempt to decipher the various aspects of romance and relationship where every story takes you into an ocean of reality check of romance”.

 About the Literary Critic

 An author of three books, Jyoti Jha is a Former HR Professional, a Literary Critic, a Columnist, and a Globetrotter. A proud panellist and Guest Speaker in Talk Shows at prestigious institutions like IIM Lucknow, IIT Delhi, IIT Jammu, and Christ College, she has been an honourable Jury Member at the Literary Club, IIT BHU for Storytelling.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.