Rethinking intimacy
both men and women engage in extramarital relations. I have tried to find out the answers to several such unanswered questions in this novel,” the author explained.
“In the novel, I have taken the 'desire' aspect of marriage, which decreases as the year of marriage increases. The beauty of marriage is that when the desire drops, emotional bonding between partners increases and if there is no major change in emotional bonding that signifies the incompatibility in the marriage,” he elaborated.
“I'm sure that certain readers would take the views as quite radical. They may criticise it. But I'm ready to handle the situation. Though it's fiction, the novel does explore reality. Most sociologists are now thinking on these lines. It's not new. I have given a new perspective to it,” he said.
“This is a novel on adultery and not on adultery at once; it is the exploration of the interplay of sex, trust and love in marriage, trying to etch out the aspects that may necessitate adultery,” Kumar said.
Some lines of the book that draw attention towards marriage read: Habit saps the life out of living and tradition is a matter of habit; sex has faded away from the marital life of Shiva. But fettered by guilt, a conscientious Shiva is not able to overstep his marriage for sex.
How should a man like Shiva react when he discovers his wife, Akriti, to be adulterous? Let his wrath loose upon her or maybe, get separated from her as well. But Shiva, the protagonist of the novel Seduction by Truth does nothing like this.
“During this journey of discovery, his reflections upon Hindu, Islamic and Christian traditions and mythologies with regard to marriage and sex successfully charm three women out of their beliefs in their respective traditions,” the author explains.