Of Illicit Love

The romance novelist, Ravinder Singh, with his art of plucky narrative techniques has been dealing with love since his first bestseller novel. However, in his seventh book, This love That Feels Right, the author actually challenges conservative ideas, even if it is interwoven by the strongest institution of relationships, namely marriage. 

The concept of infidelity came into picture since the dawn of marriage, extramarital affairs in the lives of human is going to continue till the school of marriage is breathing. Infidelity is what, that you desire to be with someone but can’t have him or her in your life because you are interlocked in a strongest institution, marriage?  The desire to have him or her in fullness becomes a flame that keeps burning.

This novel also garnered the idea of giving prominence to women character which is trending in today time. Almost similar to his other works,  Singh, on page one of his novel, This Love That Feels Right, reveals the entire plot up front. A few dialogues rendered in the voice of his central character depict the general picture of the novel at first, and that gives it painful predictability.

In her early twenties, protagonist Naina Singhania is married off to an appropriate boy chosen by her family. Siddharth is a real estate tycoon, a workaholic ‘mama’s boy’. You realise, quickly, that he’s not a very attentive husband. The lack of inattentiveness is such that, he had even postponed their honeymoon just for a business deal.

Naina lives in a gold cage, overeats and reads romances. She joins a fancy gym that is just across the road from her equally fancy apartment, and makes two new friends: Manvika, a successful TV journalist and Aarav, a charming personal trainer, who is the hero of the book. 

The love affair outside marriage as the central design has been used by novelists across the board, while it is the classics that we turn to think, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Saratchandra’s Charitraheen. 

I cannot help but give full marks to Ravinder Singh for a particular kind of progressive approach, within the self-limiting ambit of late capitalism, of course. One begins to sense the powerful appeal of Ravinder Singh’s writing for a whole generation of young people who were born in India after globalization though, the basic connect to the lifestyle of an average Indian is lacking. 

Much of the author’s material is based on his interactions with his readers and the narrative proceeds in a manner that influences the readers to respond to their own questions by relating the content  of the book to their own lives.

Everyone wants a grand love story and Singh as author has cultivated this idea well.

Through last chapters I realized the author fails to challenge the prevailing concept of marriage and infidelity and Naina is strangled into same age old dilemma that gives readers feeling of an abrupt end.