'All Our Loves: Journeys With Polyamory In India' | Excerpt

In my late teens, when the butterflies in my heart started fluttering with what I realized was the desperate need to fall in love like every silver-screen heroine I had witnessed till then, there were a million songs from Bangla and Hindi films available to express my longing. From 바카라�Yaad aa rahi hai (I am remembering you)바카라� of Love Story (1981), 바카라�Gazab ka hai din socho zara (Just think how amazing these days are)바카라� from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), and 바카라�Dil Diwana bin sajnake mane na (Without a lover I cannot control this mad heart)바카라� from Maine Pyar Kiya (1989)바카라�the hit numbers were all about love바카라�love longed for, love found, love lost. Films, the main source of entertainment and sanctuary for imagination those days, revolved around love, as did our slow, post-school afternoons of giggling friends whispering about the goings-on between girls and boys we knew. In all of this our vital takeaways were two important things: 1) Life was useless unless you found love, and 2) Love was pointless unless it was the 바카라�one true love바카라�. And we all acquired the anxiety of being declared useless and pointless if we failed. 

But I had different emotions that led to other kinds of failures. I would fall in love with more than one person at the same time. While I felt disoriented in a very monoamorous universe around me, there was, deep inside me, a voice that told me this wasn바카라�t wrong, that this too had a place in the world. But I had neither the courage to speak up, nor the language to express any of this. Nothing around me in art, literature, or songs came close to relating what I felt. I found out much later that this desolation that I experienced in those early days is shared by many polyamorous people. A friend erupted, 바카라�I felt angry, I felt lonely, I felt stupid, and I felt I was a bad person바카라�it was too much to carry, so much easier to just give in.바카라�

When in my early twenties, I first heard Ghalib바카라�s 바카라�Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi바카라� in Jagjit Singh바카라�s rendition for the TV serial Ghalib, I was astounded! The lyrics went:

Hazaron khvahishen aisi ki har khvahish pe dam nikle Bahut nikle mere arman lekin phir bhi kam nikle 

(A thousand desires such as these, each worth dying for So many of them have been expressed, yet there are more to come)

I still remember the profound impact these words had on me. Something rested at the pit of my stomach. I finally felt understood. Each of my loves was just as strong and deep as the other. And all of them true. Just like the poet said. These words, since then, have been at the heart of my practice of polyamory. 

Burden Of Definitions  

There are as many ways of defining polyamory as there are polyamorous people. For me, it has meant the desire, ability, and practice of loving more than one person at a time, with the intention of forming nurturing and enduring relationships, with the consent of all involved. These could be with or without physical or sexual intimacies, but always with an emotional connection that involves caring for and remaining invested in the other person바카라�s wellbeing. However, there are some polyamorous folks who define polyamory as relationships where there is both love and sexual desire; others who do not engage in deep emotional relationships with more than one person while keeping their sexual and other intimacies plural; and still others who consider any relationship, long or short, deep or not, emotional or sexual, as part of their explorations in polyamory. There are many asexual people engaged in polyamory too. For me, the emotional, intellectual, and political connects are a must. It has become more so over the past few years, with the growing threat of strong Hindutva right-wing forces polarizing our already fragmented worlds in India. 

What has been most important for me about being polyamorous is that I can love to my heart바카라�s content. Sometimes I hear people refer to polyamory as just 바카라�poly바카라�. That means 바카라�many바카라�, I say; 바카라�Where is the 바카라�love바카라�?바카라� I ask. When my friends sound worried about my way of loving, I give them the example of the Kalpataru tree, a wish-fulfilling, eternally giving tree in Hindu mythology. The heart is capable of loving infinitely. To surrender its definition to a zero-sum game is accepting failure in the face of a conspiracy part patriarchal and part capitalistic. 

Often people wonder about the durability of polyamorous relationships. Most assume these are quickies바카라�short bursts of great sex and if lucky, some romance too. Reality is quite different and varied. Talking about the durability of relationships, however, always feels like one is discussing the shelf-life of products. In monoamory and monogamy, one enters into a relationship with the hope of 바카라�till death do us part바카라�. Even the very cynical ones, who may realize the fallacy of this, continue to play along. But in polyamory, one does not necessarily have duration in mind when starting a relationship. 바카라�How this will work out바카라� is more of a concern than 바카라�how long this will last바카라�바카라�making quality more of a consideration than longevity. So here, relationships can be short-or long-term, some fleeting even after promises of more, others starting off as 바카라�let바카라�s see바카라� and growing into long-standing wonders!

Many relationships shift, change, and transform over time due to distance or life-changing circumstances. However, for me, unless abused or exploited, if there is some break in a relationship, I consider it a semicolon and not a full-stop. This means that I cannot stop loving someone once I have begun to love them. While the nature and texture of the relationships may change, including the levels of intimacies, at the heart of it remains a deep sense of love and commitment. 

Another question that comes up often is the number of partners one must have before qualifying as 바카라�polyamorous바카라�. Thankfully, unlike the list of Indian billionaires in the Fortune 500, being certified as polyamorous does not require a specific number of acquisitions of partners. You are polyamorous if you believe in the concept and think you are. As a polyamorous person, one may even be single바카라�out of choice, necessity, or limitations; or have just one partner for the time being while being fully aware of other possibilities; or have more than one partner. The image of a polyamorous person with a calendar chock-a-block with partner-dates is only wishful thinking. Also, anyone who has been in a relationship worth talking about knows the kind of time and energy it takes. In polyamory, imagine multiplying that by the number of relationships one has. It makes it very hard for those of us who lead otherwise busy lives to pursue so many relationships. So, the numbers really don바카라�t matter that much. The crux of this kind of living is to always know that the body and heart are free to fall in love if and when they want to, in an environment of honesty and consent. 

However, one must remember that once the restrictions of monoamory and heteronormative lives are lifted, there are myriad possibilities of being that emerge. Only some of these can be termed polyamorous. Strict and fixed definitions of either polyamory or this larger universe of non-mono non-hetero lives tend to kill the very purpose of fluidity, tentativeness, and exploration that is at the heart of this breaking away from convention. This is about giving ourselves the permission to walk the wilderness of spirit deeply embedded and waiting inside most of us. A friend recently told me, 바카라�To be polyamorous is to have the freedom to be what I still can바카라�t imagine.바카라� I would say that it also gives me the pleasure to define what chains my freedom will engage with.

Excerpted from 'All Our Loves: Journeys With Polyamory in India' by Arundhati Ghosh with permission from Aleph Book Company