India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century by IRA TRIVEDI (hardcover)

India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century is a ground-breaking look at the sexual revolution that is beginning to sweep through urban India. Bestselling author Ira Trivedi travelled from Shillong in the northeast to Chennai in the south, Konark in the east to Mumbai in the west and over a dozen other cities and towns, in order to gain unprecedented insights into changing sexual mores, marriage and love in the 21st century.The book explores the mating habits of young Indians on college campuses and in offices, examines the changing face of Indian pornography and prostitution, probes India’s gay revolution and delves into history, economics and sociology to try and understand how the nation that gave the world the Kama sutra could have become a closed, repressed society with a shockingly high incidence of rape and violence against women, the dark underside to the greater sexual freedom that men and women in our cities have begun to enjoy today.Trivedi goes deep into one of the most enduring institutions of Indian society marriage and investigates how it is faring in modern times. She interviews marriage brokers, astrologers, lawyers, relationship counsellors, ‘love commandos’, parents and nervous young brides and grooms, amongst others, to present a nuanced picture of the state of marriage in the country. She discovers that love marriages are skyrocketing and even the age-old arranged marriage is undergoing a transformation. Also on the rise are divorces, extra-marital affairs, open marriages, live-in relationships and the like. Supporting her eye-opening reportage with hundreds of interviews, detailed research, authoritative published surveys and discussions with experts on various aspects of sexuality and marriage, Trivedi has written a book that is often startling, sometimes controversial, but is always entertaining and original. India in Love will change the way urban Indians view themselves and one another.