Ravinder Singh gave up a career as a number-cruncher to become a full-time author after the runaway success of his debut novel I Too Had A Love Story . He went in to pen more bestsellers, mainly revolving around love and romance. His latest book, This Love That Feels Right ( Rs.119, Penguin Random House ) deals with the protagonist finding love outside marriage. In Bengaluru for the launch of the book, Ravinder says, “There are two female protagonists, Naina and Manvika, who look at love and marriage from different perspectives. I am not taking a stand for or against extramarital affairs. I hope to create a conversation about the topic that is never discussed in India. I was warned by friends and family that such a topic will not find many takers. I feel that these issues must be talked about and not swept aside. I have dealt with topics such as love and romance and decided to give this aspect of ‘forbidden love’.”
He says, “I have based the book on the multiple conversations I had with cross section of people. I discovered that relationships outside marriage were very common, but seldom talked about. I feel that we should not judge people based on a relationship outside marriage. I believe that humans are polygamous in nature. We should be more amenable to concepts like open marriages.”
Was there any conscious effort to write in a women’s voice? “ Not really. I write in first person to make the readers believe it is their story. They are able to connect more with it then. I could have written about two men who have extramarital affairs, but because of the patriarchal society we live in, it may have been taken for granted. I might have lost the sensitivity of the subject. As the subject is explosive and controversial, I wanted to deal with it in a sensitive way by talking about two women and their extramarital affairs and the manner in which they cope with it. This is not an autobiographical tale like many of my earlier books.”