The reader would happily travel with her to other shores, zig-zag across India, even as far as the backwaters of Kerala (maybe) in the quest for love. “When she turned inwards where her life was waiting to be examined, she blamed Raman for her predicament, thinking of the years she had been satisfied with his lovemaking, tender, attentive, pedestrian, as so much wasted time.. A Married Woman had a broader canvas in that the heroine who had a marriage that was peeling and fading in public view forced herself to find love in a lesbian relationship. But the supporting characters in this novel fell into a predictable pattern, as if the author was loathe to deviate from the norm.
Since both society and the legal system were cruel to them, Raman was “ashamed of his devotion to his wife, so jacquard fabric little had it been returned. The protagonist who asked so little from life and excused so much learned to hide her stalking shame in loving another woman. Both Ishita and Raman fell into a relationship to salvage what shreds of self-esteem and sanity they had left. Now the destroyer was in her heart, threatening what she had once held dear. We want to find love and passion at a safe distance and in small doses, so that we can sip them slowly till life ebbs away. To mourn for a woman whose life could be constructed in this way was to reveal all the hidden ugliness beneath the beautiful exterior.We are the choices we make, and Shagun struggling to keep passion alive and be a good mother at the same time, comes across as full bodied.
That’s why so many of us are drawn to soap operas, celebrity love affairs and juicy stories. Characters like that who live and lie every day in little ways are real and fragile.” Ashok the alpha male, corporate success story, whiz kid, and a threateningly attractive single man, lead Shagun to that head-on collision between desire and duty. We want to find love and passion at a safe distance and in small doses, so that we can sip them slowly till life ebbs away. Forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone and backpacking could throw up a story twice its size. The heroines who live through her stories lose themselves, not all at once, but day by day through the maze of marriage and its trappings. Their illicit relationship, his corporate image, his success, their lovemaking, their risk, his embrace, his power over her, that passionate impulse that resonates and lives through all lovers damages her marriage and causes havoc in Raman’s life and that of their children, Arjun and Roohi.