A mere coincidence that I finished reading these two books in the supposed ‘Love Week’, the Valentine’s week. Happily both are written by Women and both are above Love. The best part is that one is in English the other one is Hindi. While one is about pleasant heart-aches the other is about heart breaks, Ah!!!. The one about romantic love, “Zikr-e-Yaar Chale: Love Notes” in Hindi, is by Pallavi Trivedi which picks the low hanging fruits of short fiction that we are living ‘now’, in the second quarter of 21st Century. The English one is “Heartbreak Unfiltered: Things nobody told you about love, loss and letting go” by Milan Vohra. As the title suggests these are the stories of heartbreaks from people interviewed by Milan over a decade. Heartbreak (not necessarily romantic) touches us all, regardless of age, gender or geography. Both books are about emotional bonds characterized by deep intimacy, mutual respect, and commitment as also but the pain and longing of the one lost. I enjoy the parallel play of words going on in my head when I am reading English and Hindi together. Strange, how metaphors, words, situations and even individual reactions differ in these two worlds which at times seem alien to each other. Loved reading both. Pallavi Trivedi, you have a hand on the nerve and have put together a world of contemporary fickle love. And Milan Vohra, thanks for the invite to the book launch, i wonder if you noticed many moist eyes in the audience. It is another thing that she didn’t sign my copy of the book. Amid these two my mind was buzzing with a number from the 80s – Tina Turner belting out ‘What’s Love got to do with it … that second hand emotion… who needs a heart when a heart can be broken…. what’s love….’ Cheer up gals and guys you never know when a Cherub attacks.

(Pix: Milan Vohra signing copies of her book at Kunzum bookstore in Delhi)