Manspotting: Chronicles Of Mid Life Romance

This month, a book on Indian men leaves our columnist impressed.

- Palash Krishna Mehrotra

In India, marriage and children often mark the end of an individual’s journey through life. In her terrific memoir Manspotting (published by Speaking Tiger), Ritu Bhatia, a microbiologist by training, takes as the starting point the end of her marriage in her mid-thirties: “Like most other Indian women of my generation, I’d made a jailbreak marriage, moving directly from my father’s home to my husband’s.”

The rapidly transforming dating landscape of a newly neon Delhi forms the backdrop of this story of the personal awakening of a single mother: “Everyone seemed to be bumbling along, making up new moves. A sliding morality crept in, making it hard to attribute any significance to emotional and sexual intimacy.”

Bhatia changes houses and neighbourhoods, attends PTA meetings at her son’s school, switches careers (from book club to bridal magazine to agony aunt to health columnist) and introduces us to a conveyor belt of Delhi men.