A fresh perspective on marriage!
At one instance, Uttara, the feisty protagonist of the first chapter declares, ‘See, I grew up with dogs,’ she says. ‘And the thing is, as long as they’re intelligent, you can train them. And because they’re so satisfied in their intelligence, they won’t realise they’re being trained. The key is to make them think they’re doing what you want them to out of their own accord. So, I decided that was how I needed to look at a man—like a dog with potential.’
Speaking of what made her write a book on arranged marriages, Krishnan says, “Before I started working on Hitched, I was writing a novel on marriage, and the pressure society puts on young people to get married. The impulse that drove it drew from personal experience, but the novel was not autobiographical.”
Krishnan, a journalist by profession also insists on why the concept of arranged marriages continues to work in 21st century India, “There is a lot of leeway now, and parents usually respect the decisions of the couple. I think people go in with a sort of what’s-the-harm attitude, and often find matches. Maybe the driving forces are age, the need for companionship, the fact that younger siblings are waiting to get married too, and so on.”
The author herself is not a stranger to the frequent ordeals of an arranged set-up but also feels that the process of writing this book has changed her, “Several of my cousins and friends did take the arranged route, and I’ve known how their relationships worked. The idea that did change was my perception that arranged marriages are, by definition, a last resort. I came round to thinking of it as one possible avenue to meet a partner – but, of course, it has its restrictions.”
Travelling around the country with her first book, Nandini Krishnan’s coming days too, are quite packed, “I have three novels and two more non-fiction works in mind right now,” she says.
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