Knot for Keeps is a short compilation of stories and non-fictional essays on marriage. The topic is tackled by a variety of writers using various lenses to look at an experience that is so uniquely personal while at the same time something so general that almost everyone in India experiences.
Sathya Saran – the renowned journalist, has collated all these stories and essays. You might remember her for her stint as editor of Femina and DNA Me. She is also an author, a columnist, and a professor at NIFT, Mumbai.
A Brief Synopsis
What holds two people together for life, sometimes across continents? What drives them apart even as they share their lives under the same roof? What makes marriage the only socially acceptable goal of a relationship? Are women, and men, preferring other options to marriage these days? Why are more and more marriages failing? Is it to do with changing social norms or individual expectations? This anthology takes a hard look at marriage and tries to decode this age-old alliance.
~ From Amazon
My Review
I was a bit surprised by the first essay in the anthology by Sharanya Manivannan, where she talks about living a single life (by choice and by accident) in a time when everyone she knows is getting coupled together. She muses:
to reject marriage is not the same as to reject partnership
A book on marriage starting with the experience of a single woman was a little surprising. But the rest of the essays and short stories all deal completely with the marriage experience. The book has been edited very well, and I loved how well Sathya Saran combined the short stories, essays, humorous, serious, and poignant stories in an interesting way. A sad story is followed by a sarcastic essay, followed by a funny short. You get the idea. There were all types of writing mixed in looking at marriage from all points of view.
Some of my favorites were:
- A Life Sentence is a wonderful ode from a woman to her husband – When the author Rita Mukherjee is diagnosed with a terminal illness, her husband resolves to make the best use of her time left and manages to wring out another 10 full happy years with his wife.
- What I Hate Most by Milan Vohra starts out as a typical man bitching about his wife, leading gently to reminiscences about how they met and married, the many small disappointments of married life, until the shocking twist where the true affections of man and wife are shown.
- I also liked some of the more journalistic entries in the book. In The Cost of a Runaway Marriage, Neha Dixit looks into the laws surrounding marriage in India. Wry and funny, it was also an insightful look into how difficult it can be to formalize an inter-caste or inter-religious union.
- A similar look into separation and divorce laws in the Muslim community was just as eye-opening. Noor Zaheer in her essay talks about what happens when Muslim women decide to opt out of living with their spouses. It’s pretty chilling reading.
The above list was just that of the highlights. However, every entry in this book was a little gem, and I enjoyed reading it very much.
Do not expect any matrimonial advice from this book. What it is, is an insightful read into the many different aspects of modern marriage.
Huge thanks to Harper Collins for sending me this book for review consideration.
