Three times love

I donrsquot know Rinki Pinki and Atul Neither do most people who saw their wedding video and had mostly negative opinions of itRinki and Pinki twin sisters and software engineers reportedly quiet and reticent from the Mumbai suburb of Kandivli lost their father a little while ago Atul a taxi owner hails from Solapur They met when the sisters rented a taxi from Atul during their motherrsquos illness Over the past six months itrsquos said that he was very helpful to the family and one of the twins fell in love with him The twins do everything togethermdashthey even work in the same place So they both decided to marry him Atul parents and RinkiPinkirsquos mom were all good with itLast week the video of their jaimala went viral It seemed awash with goodnatured exuberance and everyone seemed to be having a jolly good timeSocial media filled with the usual ldquosarvanashrdquo utterances Men were affronted that any another than they themselves had amorous success Every news report called the relationship lsquobizarrersquo Eventually a complaint was filed by a social worker from Atulrsquos village The National Commission for Women we were told was also concerned No one it seemed spoke to the wedded partiesInterestingly the court threw out the casemdashbecause it had not been registered by an aggrieved family member In our society that could mean a cheatedon spouse but could as well mean unwilling parents no matter how old the offspring When it comes to matters of love and desire moral propriety and gendered views of women as childlike prey not idiosyncratic adults govern the gaze the conversation and the judgementCuriosity and consensuality almost neverWe all search for love our entire lives in some way And no matter what our relationship status many feel they have never really been lovedIn truth attached or detached we find love many times in our lives Just that often it appears in unconventional places and shapes In erotic intimacies experienced within friendship In relationships that are entirely virtual In the inexplicable attachment to someone wersquove met just once or twice The commitment we feel to someone we have long parted from but remember with an abiding flame The almost painful empathy for a colleague A romantic love across orientation The yearning and joy of someonersquos social media presence The simultaneous love for two or three people That person we barely know but inexplicably keep seeing in our dreams All kinds of love we rarely recognise as such Even when we give in to these loves most of them remain in a shadowy halfacknowledged place creating the grounds for much hurt and violence So our emotional lives are constantly undercut and soured by judgement of ourselves and othersNowadays Englishspeaking people struggle against these limitations to intimacy through concepts like polyamory Terms accord legitimacy to emotions and relationships that have always existed on the edges of respectability Whether living in terms and categories can ever fulfil the longing for love remains a questionSure maybe the RinkiPinkiAtul story is complicated with a dark seam Or maybe itrsquos simple Maybe this threesome could recognise three times lovemdashromantic filial friendly love times threemdashand choose a relationshape for their emotions rather than the other way round In the domain of emotion love can be queenParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom