Review of "Knot for Keeps: Writing the Modern Marriage"

#Review of #KnotForKeeps The first few stories, 'Apportionments of love' by Sharanya Manivannan, 'Conjugular' by Chitra Viraraghavan and 'Heaven Forbid' by Krishna Shastri Devulapalli, almost made me want to abandon the book.

In 'Conjugular', the author uses the phrase "if you take my meaning" multiple times. I'm not sure if she meant it as a stylistic device, but it really started grating on my nerves and detracted from the story.

In 'Heaven Forbid', the author fat-shames his friend's 90+ kg wife and also writes a dialogue shaming people with mental illnesses, "Why can't she get a mean, nasty sex offender or schizophrenic who charges less, da?" ( Referring to a person with schizophrenia as a schizophrenic is not the worst crime he has committed here. Putting that person in the class of mean, nasty sex-offenders is just atrocious.)

Since I don't read Hindi poems, I skipped the one by ad guru Prasoon Joshi. I'm sure the Hindi version would have been far better than the English version, which was also presented there.

The book started working for me from Page 44, which featured a story by Noor Zaheer. From page 44 till the end of the book, which was on page 164, the stories were interesting, gripping even.

I loved 'The imperfect marriage' by Harimohan Paruvu, but it's sad to see that Harper Collins has botched up his introduction, which is featured at the end. In his introduction, a few lines from the previous biography is pasted, which is of Kalyan Ray. As a result, Harimohan Pavuru's bio erroneously states that he is married to Shobha and Aparna Sen! If I were in this author's shoes, I would be pretty angry at having been inadvertently referred to as a bigamist!

'The cost of a runaway marriage' by Neha Dixit was very informative.

On the whole, despite these lapses I mentioned, I would give this book 3 stars.

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