For a nation stereotyped into the grand gesture, we sure do love a helluva lot in many quiet ways. Love graffiti defaces our most prized monuments (our most beautiful one is just such a graffiti on the walls of time), and our railway coaches. Where we cannot dance in open spaces, we glance in confined ones. More alliances are today wrought in one morning commute on the Delhi Metro than in all of a matchmaking aunty’s morning gossips (Page 8). Our school desks are compass-etched with initials that are certainly not algebraic. Even the benaami is a trademark.

Modern love: Stop Think Go (2006) by Thukral & Tagra

The indefinable, that which lingers between the law and the custom, is attractive to us. The Indian spirit of entrepreneurship finds ways to transact a currency of love in this space between relationships as well (Pages 12-13). Even the law today understands that it is better to bend and make space for India’s many passions than to expect this madhouse nation of varied community-driven licentiousness to adapt.

But we do not stop with romance. Absence, too, is love. Ask a team whose editor is away. Pressure is love. Sachin Tendulkar at 99 bats for the love of India, not for an inanimate record. It is only in India that the guru-shishya relationship is akin to love; even in its modern avatars of the coach-star or the corporate mentor and protégé.

Anger, too, is love. Only in India can Shah Rukh Khan slapping Shirish Kunder be dismissed as an act of brotherly love for Farah Khan. Groups, sangathans, sansthas, cults and causes, too, are love. From Anna Hazare to the Brazilian football team—Indians are roused to topi-wearing, team-colour T-shirt-toting, screaming-from-the-balcony-at-3am passions.

We ache for our cities, through our art, our poetry and our literature, so much so that we append their names into our surnames and travel to tech shores overseas. Even our elderly, like Bangalore’s Pizza Grannies who raised funds to build themselves an old-age companionship centre (Page 9), or the oldest man yet, 92-year-old R.T. Tiwari, to register himself with the senior citizens’ marriage bureau, are full of India’s endless hope. We die for love, and sadly, this means we kill for love—of honour, family, status, society, too.

This is how we love; deeply, abidingly, intrusively and loudly. When our narrative borders on hysteria, no Indian raises an eyebrow.

Is it surprising that this multiplicity exists? There are, in Sanskrit, over 99 words for love. There are more than 33 in Persian, and four in Greek, only one in English. In Sanskrit, angaja means “blood”. But it also means an intoxicating passion that flows within you akin to blood. Ananga, its opposite, means “bodiless”. But it also refers to Shiva’s incineration of Kama, the god of love, for having made him fall in love with Parvati. In India, such incendiary anger, too, is love. Kandarpa is that which is so sensual, it inflames even the gods.

Words within words across centuries strung together with double entendre at its core evolved to make the modern Indian tongue. Across generations, India is reclaiming it.

Gayatri Jayaraman

Issue editor

HOW INDIA LOVES

At a counsellor’s office or through online singles networks, in the Delhi Metro, in front of a football match broadcast or within a commune for the elderly—real love is not hard to find.

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METRO LOVE | ROMANCE CENTRAL

We met commuters on the Delhi Metro to find out how the trains have transformed love life in the city

By Mayank Austen Soofi

This msg is for cutie pie who boarded Metro from Pitampura on 2 February around 8.30am & left at Sec 16 Noida station. She was wearing blu jeans & black levis tee. U were looking gorgeous. I am the guy standing near u. Is there any chance of new frnd. If you too liked me, reply me.

—A message on “Dil Se”, a classified section in the HT City, Delhi, supplement of Hindustan Times.

Rosy day: Anayana, a marketing analyst, met her French boyfriend, a PhD student, at Rajiv Chowk Metro station. Priyanka Parashar/Mint

Atrain pulled into the yellow line underground Metro station at Rajiv Chowk, below the bustle of Connaught Place. The doors opened. They entered. The doors closed. The train moved. Leaning over her in the crowded compartment, his blue-green eyes resting on the beauty spot on her left cheek, he said, “I want to coat you in honey.”

She laughed, saying softly, “All the uncles and aunties are staring at us.”

Anayana (name changed on request) wants to keep her romantic life secret. The 23-year-old knows her relationship may lead nowhere. She is a marketing analyst, he a PhD student. She is Kashmiri, he is French. Her conservative parents might never agree…to what? She met him at a Metro station. He will eventually return to his country for good. (Read more)

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GROUP LOVE | THE GRANNY JOY CLUB

Retirement is not the end. From selling pizzas to establishing a home for the elderly, the ‘Pizza Grannies’ show you how it’s done

By Pavitra Jayaraman

The force: Padma Srinivasan (extreme right) with the residents at Vishranthi. Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint

Just get me an appointment and I’ll convince him,” says a feisty 75-year-old Padma Srinivasan on the phone to a friend whose husband is the head honcho at a multinational corporation (MNC). She is seated in the dining area of Vishranthi, a senior citizens’ home on the Hoskote-Malur Road on the outskirts of Bangalore. She built it with her daughter, Sarasa Vasudevan, 52, and 80-year-old friend Jayalakshmi Sreenivasan, also Vasudevan’s mother-in law. Srinivasan is pitching the possibility of selling home-made pizzas at the MNC. “It all began with the pizzas, and the pizzas still help us,” she explains with a smile.

The force: Padma Srinivasan (extreme right) with the residents at Vishranthi. Aniruddha Chowdhury/MintAs the managing trustee of Vishranthi Trust, Srinivasan runs a home that promises a comfortable stay, healthy vegetarian food and a positive environment to senior citizens who choose to live independently of relatives or children. Built on a 1-acre plot, the campus is lined with trees, patches of lawn and vegetable gardens. It is guarded by Shanti, the well-trained resident dog. “This is the result of our labour of love,” Srinivasan says with pride. (Read more)

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SPOUSE LOVE | STATE OF THE UNION

With live-in, semi-arranged, gay and live-out relationships on the rise, the legal system is learning to cope with India’s complex and varied marriage landscape

By Gayatri Jayaraman

In June, a couple in their 20s walked into the office of senior lawyer Mrunalini Deshmukh in Bandra, Mumbai. Deshmukh asked them if they needed a divorce. “No,” they said. Did they need counselling? “No”. They were not even engaged, let alone married. Deshmukh explained she was a family lawyer. The couple smiled. “We came to a lawyer because who would know better what goes wrong in a marriage and what leads to a divorce,” they said. For the next hour, the couple asked Deshmukh about in-laws, money, children, finances, assets, and drew up a road map for a path they were not even clear they wanted to go down. “They were looking at what are the issues that are likely to come up. They asked for dos and don’ts. It was an eye-opener for me,” Deshmukh says.

Ramesh Dave/Mint

As the institution of marriage evolves socially and legally, it is clear that Indian society has always had a more practical approach to it than the Western world.

In Ahmedabad, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Vinamulya Amulya Sewa is a marriage service for senior citizens set up by 62-year-old Nathubhai Patel in 2001. Patel has just received an application from his oldest member yet: 1919-born R.T. Tiwari in Bhopal. In Coimbatore, as in San Francisco, US, couples working in the IT sector routinely choose “weekend marriages”, living apart in perfect harmony for their jobs. Newly-wed Rekha Sinha (name changed on request), a 35-year-old Mumbai corporate executive, whose husband has a special child from a previous marriage, says: “I am clear that should anything happen to my husband, the financial responsibility of that child is as much mine as it would have been his.” These are the new spaces being negotiated. (Read more)

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FAN LOVE | THE FOOTBALL ‘TIFOSO’

Globalization has created a new kind of love. These are mostly young men, embracing foreign football with an all-consuming passion

By Supriya Nair

Long-distance relationship: Mumbai-based Malik Sumrani, 22, has been a fan of the English football club Manchester United since he was 14

One evening in May 2007, Italian football club AC Milan played a scrappy but tense Champions’ League final against Liverpool Football Club in Athens, Greece. It was 3am in Mumbai, 5,000km away, but 19-year-old Himanshu Parmekar was awake, watching. Milan had scored two miraculous goals, but Liverpool had pulled in a late one. The referee’s whistle seemed to be holding the world to ransom. When it finally blew, signalling full time, Milan won 2-1, and something inside Parmekar went for broke. He ran out to his balcony and screamed into the summer night. “We won!” he shouted. “We won!”

Long-distance relationship: Mumbai-based Malik Sumrani, 22, has been a fan of the English football club Manchester United since he was 14“I must surely have upset the neighbourhood,” Parmekar, now 23, states modestly. His neighbours may take comfort in the fact that they are not alone. At least Milan haven’t won another European trophy in the intervening years. Imagine harbouring an FC Barcelona fan in your backyard: two winning finals in three seasons, all starting at 1am, and a total of 13 trophies in that time. Around the Manchester United follower in your family, you find yourself thinking longingly of the 2009-10 European season, the only time in the last four years the club didn’t make it to a Champions’ League final. Somehow, in a nation particularly adept at devotion, millions of people—largely, though not exclusively, men under the age of 35—are called every year, around the year, to worship in sports stadiums five time zones away. (Read more)

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BUSINESS OF LOVE | CLICK HERE FOR THE BUTTERFLIES

Exclusive networks designed to find ‘a real connect’ promise a trump card over Indian matrimonial websites—they promise love

By Anindita Ghose

Cupid on call: Mangharam, 37, co-founded the singles network, Floh, in May. Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint

Siddharth Mangharam met his wife of three years, Simran, at a party in Bangalore over a platter of Roquefort. “Most couldn’t stand its pungent flavour but there was one attractive woman who, like me, was really enjoying the sharp cheese,” says Mangharam. “That got us talking for a whole hour about our shared passion for cheeses. This serendipitous interaction led to us ultimately getting married a year later.”

Mangharam, 37, is now in what he calls the “business of catalysing serendipity”. A business management graduate whose first start-up, Peek, is into cloud computing, his second helps educated, urban singles connect with each other. Mangharam, CEO, Floh (Find Life Over Here), co-founded the singles network in May with Simran and two other partners to address the gap in premium dating and matrimonial services in India. (Read more)

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BUSINESS OF LOVE | DATE DOCTOR

If you are having trouble finding the perfect woman, this is the man you need—a commodity trader by day and courtship coach by evening

By Arun Janardhan

On a weeknight in a bar in Bandra, Mumbai, the ratio is completely skewed. Vicky Kalwani (name changed on request) does a rough headcount in the outdoor section of the bar, pointing out the around 40 men to just four women. He shrugs in a self-explanatory manner.

THINKSTOCK

Kalwani is a dating consultant on an evening out with a “friend”, or client, in an exercise to get the latter to mingle and chat. Their chances this evening are meagre, because of the lopsided gender ratio, though for all practical purposes Kalwani’s work is not restricted to only chatting up women.

The 32-year-old has a day job in commodity trading but also decided to put to use his social skills in helping men get “into the game”. When Kalwani moved to Mumbai more than a year ago from London, he scoped the market for such an opportunity but found none (unlike in the US, where he has also lived). He was already familiar with Ross Jeffries, the creator of “speed seduction”—writings and seminars designed to help men understand women better—and The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, a non-fictional book by undercover journalist Neil Strauss. So he decided to coach men in his spare time on how to improve their social skills through a series of theoretical and practical lessons. (Read more)

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BUSINESS OF LOVE | AIR KISSING 101

A new technology for Internet-connected kisses wants to redefine long-distance

By Gopal Sathe

Tele-kissing: The future of romance in the digital age?

You can chat or video-talk on the Internet, but one of the problems that dogs long-distance relationships is the lack of physical intimacy. Singapore-based Iranian researcher Hooman Samani wants to change that with the Kissenger or Kiss Messenger device created by his research centre Lovotics.

Lovotics is part of the Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Singapore, a collaboration between the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Keio University of Japan. Samani hopes with his research to “improve human affection with the careful use of technology”.

Samani has been working on Lovotics to develop a better understanding of human love and create a system for robots to feel affection for humans. The millions-of-dollars-funded research will go into furthering human and robot interactions. Over email, Samani outlines the goals of his research. (Read more)

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EXCERPTS | THE SLAVE’S DREAM

An exclusive from Sheba Karim’s story ‘Zulaikha to Her Daughter’, which features in Zubaan’s upcoming anthology of erotica

Ladies said in the City: “The wife of the (great) ‘Aziz is seeking to seduce her slave from his (true) self: Truly hath he inspired her with violent love: we see she is evidently going astray.”

When she heard of their malicious talk, she sent for them and prepared a banquet for them: she gave each of them a knife: and she said (to Joseph), “Come out before them.” When they saw him, they did extol him, and (in their amazement) cut their hands: they said, “Allah preserve us! No mortal is this! This is none other than a noble angel!”

Jayachandran/Mint

—Quran, excerpt from Surah 12: Yusuf (translation by Yusuf Ali)

The idol of my life—divine!

All radiant, clothed in mystery

And loving me as I adore,

As none dared ever love before,

Shall be—nay, is—even now, is mine!

—Jami, Yusuf and Zulaikha (translation by Charles F. Horne)

This is the most important story of my life. You might find it too honest, too blunt, but I cannot tell it any other way, and if you desire it to have a moral, let it be this—if there is anything worth striving for, it is to love madly, and be madly loved. (Read more)

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THE PECKING ORDER

The Hindi GEC space is exploding with love stories ‘with a difference’. But can Indian television really move on from kitchen dramas?

By Seema Chowdhry

Soap diary: Khushi (Sanaya Irani) and Arnav (Barun Sobti) of Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon. Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

Something strange is happening in the Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) space. Until about nine months ago, at prime time, characters such as Tulsi and Mihr (of Star Plus’ long-running and best-selling soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) and Naitik and Akshara (of another long-running daily on Star, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai) epitomized eternal love. Their romance was confined to the four walls of their homes, with about a dozen in-laws and at least a handful of children watching over their every move. Then came Anandi (Balika Vadhu, Colors), who had no choice in the boy she would marry. She and other young heroines instead fell in love with the mother, father and grandparents-in-law.

Soap diary: Khushi (Sanaya Irani) and Arnav (Barun Sobti) of Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon. Abhijit Bhatlekar/MintBut over the last few months, things have begun changing. In mid-2011, the not-so-trim Ram Kapoor and the not so-sprightly-any-more Sakshi Tanwar burst on to the small screen in their avatars as Ram and Priya in Bade Achhe Lagte Hain on Sony (produced by Balaji Telefilms), billed not as a “family drama” but as a “different love story”. They were soon followed by Khushi (Sanaya Irani) and Arnav (Barun Sobti) of Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon on Star Plus—both shows started shaking up the TRP (target rating point) game in Hindi GECs. Kuch To Log Kahenge followed in October, on Sony. In the last month alone, two channels have launched two new shows (Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha on Colors, and Kya Hua Tera Vaada on Sony), each declaring theirs “a love story with a difference”. Another show, Sajda Tere Pyaar Mein on Star Plus, is slated for launch on Valentine’s Day and, yes, this one too is a different love story—with a patriotic angle to boot. (Read more)

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WINGS OF A CITY

Sudarshan Shetty’s ‘Flying Bus’ is a love song for Mumbai, reminding us of the city’s history and the need to adapt to new realities

By Sanjukta Sharma

Looking at Mumbai can sometimes be a joyous thing. If you’re sitting on the upper deck of a Routemaster, the familiar becomes cinematic and distant, and the city’s beauty becomes easily recognizable. The last time I sat on one was in 2007, out of necessity.

Come fly with me: It took 248 days to manufacture the Flying Bus and 8 hours to install it. Photographs by Kedar Bhat/Mint

It was a Mumbai bandh called by the Shiv Sena, and no suburban cabbie would drive to Dadar. Dadar is perceived, especially on days like these, as an intimidating Sena stronghold. The wholesale vegetable market I pass by every day in a taxi, on the pavements of the Lokmanya Tilak Bridge, looked beautiful. Usually I recognize it by its distinct smell. Coriander leaves, combined with earthy dust and putridity. The bus trundled by, passing wads of green vegetables and women lumbering them on to small vehicles; the familiar smell was faint. The rest of Dadar was restive, and a bit eerie. Mumbai was diminutive and surreal.

The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) double-decker bus, the Routemaster, negotiates the city’s maddening traffic jams by blocking what’s around it. Everything stops when the bus stops. Sitting atop, and looking down at still, dysphoric Mumbai, I remembered REM’s music video, Everybody Hurts, set in a better-looking traffic snarl. Joy and vexation in one traffic jam moment. (Read more)

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LOST LOVE | SOUP BOY,YOU GO MAN!

Yo baays, I am write article. If you are brutally dumped in love, this is where you can go

By Aadisht Khanna

Got a death wish? The sights in Australia may effect a change of heart, or you could be eaten by sharks, or poisoned by stonefish, scorpionfish or jellyfish. Thinkstock

For those who’re in love, travel is easy, disgustingly so. Travel agents and hotels fall over themselves to give them Valentine’s Day or honeymoon packages (all of which seem to mandatorily include complimentary fruit baskets for some reason). But what if you’ve been jilted in love? In that case, Lounge loves you—and we’ve got a list of the best, worst and weirdest places you can go to do the things that the unlucky in love usually do: Get hammered, get religious, conquer the wild, or bid goodbye to this cruel world, once and for all. (Read more)