westland ltd
Why We Love the Way We Do
Preeti Shenoy is among the highest selling authors in India and has been featured on the Forbes India long-list of the most influential celebrities.
India Today has named her as being unique for being the only woman in the best-selling league. In the past she has written for various publications such as The Times of India and Readers Digest . She currently writes a regular column in The Financial Chronicle .
She has given several talks in many educational institutions including the IITs and IIMs. She is also an artist specialising in portraiture. Her other interests are travel, photography and Ashtanga yoga.
Website: www.preetishenoy.com
westland ltd
61, II Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095
93, I Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
First published by westland ltd 2015
First e-book edition: 2015
Copyright Preeti Shenoy 2015
All rights reserved
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978-93-85724-60-2
Typeset by PrePSol Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.
Printed at Thomson Press (India) Ltd.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.
For Satish, Atul and Purvi
And for Anukul, Vani and Manu too
Contents
Introduction
A question I am often asked is, When was it that you decided that you wanted to be a writer? My answer to that one never varies. There really wasnt an exact defining moment. I have written ever since I learnt how to. My affair with the written word continued well into my college years and I wrote many short stories, some of which won prizes at the university level. But I never thought that I would actually become a novelistor would be writing my own column in a national newspaper.
This book is a collection of pieces adapted from my column Sex and the City, written over the last one-and-a-half years for the Financial Chronicle . I thoroughly enjoyed the writing experience, as the column is on relationships, sex, communication between men and women, finding the perfect partner and anything else that you can think of on those lines. The inspiration for these columns comes from real life stories that many people have shared with me over the years. People seem to consider me a relationship expert. I get mails from complete strangers who share with me the most intimate details of their lives and ask me for my advice. Now here is the thingwhen I am not directly involved in something, the perspective I have from my vantage point is so different from the one someone badly entangled in the situation has. So whenever I have offered my thoughts, they have always been graciously received. Through the stories that people shared with me, what I discovered was that when it comes to relationships and love, we are all slaves of our heart, whether we are in our forties or our twenties.
Surprisingly most people are okay when I ask them if I can write about what they have told me. In fact, they urge me to do so as they feel it will help others in a similar situation. So in many places in this book I have shared real stories, but I have changed the details and the names to protect identities.
Most of what I have said in the book comes from a combination of many hours of research and many years of experience. While writing the columns, I had to be certain what I was saying was backed by scientific research and studies. So I investigated and read up. I was intrigued by some of the things I discovered. Some of it confirmed what I already knew. Some of it came as a surprise. I also learnt about many things: for example, how the dynamics of a relationship works, whether there is a pattern, whether we can control things like choosing whom we fall in love with, what we can do to make the relationship last, how we can tell if it is love or lust, and so on. I have shared it all in this book.
The book is divided into seven sections. Finding the One is largely about finding love and deals with the dating stage; Getting Hitched is about marriage; When Things Go Wrong deals with break-ups and all things associated; On Men and Women focuses on gender differences; Lets Talk deals with how differently men and women communicate; Three to Tango is about infidelity; and Between the Sheets is about sex. You can read them in any order you likethat is the beauty of a collection like this one.
Thank you very much for reading this book and I sincerely hope you enjoy it, find it useful and, most importantly, I hope it makes you think.
Preeti Shenoy
August 2015
FINDING THE ONE
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Kahlil Gibran
Why we cannot help whom we fall in love with
Someone i know is a self-confessed love-addict. He is thirty-two, works at a mid-management level in a corporate organisation and is doing really well in his career. It is just that he doesnt seem to have found The One, and he flits from one relationship to the next.
I cant help it. It is the thrill of that initial, giddy, out-of-control feeling that happens in every new relationship that I am addicted to, he admits.
He has been in seven wildly unsuitable relationships so far. And each one ended in a disaster. It wasnt that he did not love the women. It was just that he found a reason to break off each time.
What happens when you get to know her better? Why dont you make an effort to see it through? I prod.
Too much work, really. And once I get to know a woman better, the mystery vanishes.
So does she just become another notch on your bedpost? Do you even realise how that makes you sound? I ask in mock-horror. Of course I know him very well and I am only teasing him. It is just that he is too much of an idealist and is still seeking the perfect woman. But I am not going to tell him so and lose an opportunity to rile him a little.
Yes, I am aware. I am a serial philanderer and I am never going to get married, he says with a straight face.
I would like to see you falling in love. I mean true love. You will be singing a different tune then.
I too am waiting for that day, he sighs.
If we are to go by what the movies and novels tell us, falling in love just happens. If it is a Hindi movie, you hear a melodious track in the background, the lyrics usually waxing eloquent about the heroines beauty, comparing various parts of her anatomy to the moon, stars, the suneven Fevicol. This is accompanied by the hero gazing at her with the expression of a glutton discovering a six-course banquet consisting of various gastronomical delights.
In real life though, falling in love often happens over a period of time. You see someone gorgeous and get attracted strongly. If you strike up a conversation, find each other likableor intriguing, as the case may bethen you exchange phone numbers or email ids. After a couple of dates, discovering many things and maybe a kiss or something more, depending on how much in resonance your moral compasses are, the magic happens, and wham , you are in love.
