Relapse: The Consequences of Love

by Shrikant Verma, Krishna Baldev Vaid (Translator)

A man comes home to find a note from Bindo—his estranged lover—asking to meet. Everything about Bindo angers him—her beauty, pride and poise; the sexual attraction she continues to exert upon him. He recognizes in himself again the agonizing jealousy which had forced her to leave him. And he fears her uncanny ability to pierce the barriers he has erected around himself.

Yet the two meet—in each other’s houses, in restaurants and parks across Delhi—still attracted to each other but haunted by their past, still inflicting pain, locked in a battle of doomed love. But when, after a drunken evening, he wakes up in Bindo’s bed, at her feet, he finds himself stripped of all ego, and helpless.

Bold and ahead of its time, Relapse is an intense exploration of physical and emotional desire and the inscrutable ways of men and women in love. A compact love story of visceral impact, and a portrait of Delhi that now exists only in memory, Relapse is a modern classic.

139 pages, Paperback

Published October 10, 2018

Reviews

[Aastha]

A random free book I got from an online bookstore. I am tired of stories that promise the city (Delhi in this case) as a character making me hopeful to see a portrait of a time but then it's just a bunch of people being insufferable. If I was being generous, I would say it felt like a character study inside the head of a man who cries about male loneliness epidemic on instagram while commenting slurs under 16 year old children's posts.

[Venkat]

Not sure of the rating. It did affect me in a strange worming manner, unable to put my finger on that though. The writing is lyrical, wonder how much was lost in translation.