| الملخص: | Some young middle-class women in Ghaziabad have little hope that love
will lead to a desirable future. Therefore, they kindle desire in casual
encounters that they describe as “enjoyment” and cultivate a sensibility of
living in the moment. Enjoyment departs from love (pyaar) as depicted in
mass media like Bollywood that leads to marriage. Instead, through
enjoyment, college-going women move through fantasies of love leading to
marriage under conditions of urbanisation, the rise of women’s education,
and pervasive unemployment. In the process, they uncouple flirting and
erotic play from its progression to love or marriage. In so doing, women
ironically and unintentionally create an alternate form of love. This version
of love is playful, creative, and fun. It allows women to access pleasure and
enact a version of love that is not latched to marriage. By paying attention
to these alternate forms of love, this paper shows how women work past
the “cruel optimism” of love, reconstituting it as a site for self-affirmation,
pleasure, and play.
|
|---|