Podcast with Mansi Choksi, author of “The Newlyweds”

Mansi Choksi (Photo: Adam Perez)

Two neighbors from the same village fall in love and elope to a shelter for couples that break caste norms. A Hindu woman falls in love with a Muslim man, drawing the ire of Hindu nationalists. Two women start a lesbian relationship.

 

 

The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India, Mansi Choksi (Atria Book, August 2022; Icon Books, Penguin Viking India, September 2022)
The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India, Mansi Choksi (Atria Book, August 2022; Icon Books, Penguin Viking India, September 2022)

These three couples are the protagonists of Mansi Choksi’s The Newlyweds. This work charts the lives of Dawinder and Neetu, Monika and Arif, Reshma and Preethi, who all break social norms in their relationships, and are forced to endure the sometimes-violent consequences—not always successfully.

In this interview, Mansi and I talk about the three couples in her book—and what their struggles tell us about love, relationships and social pressure in today’s India.

Mansi Choksi is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and two-time Livingston Award Finalist. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and more. She lives in Dubai with her husband and son. The Newlyweds is her first book.


Nicholas Gordon has an MPhil from Oxford in International Relations and a BA from Harvard. He is a writer, editor and occasional radio host based in Hong Kong.