‘Glorification of couplehood skews honest conversations about love’: Writer Arundhati Ghosh
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Reading Arundhati Ghosh’s All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India changed the way I speak about love. Ghosh – who is also the editor of Oshomoye Phire Esho Nodi Hoye, a Bangla poetry collection (LaStrada Prokashona, February 2023); and, most recently, Meyeder Mayera, a Bangla essay collection edited with Sanhita Bandyopadhyay (Sonta Prokashona, January 2026) – has emerged as a prominent voice on polyamory, writing with a clarity and courage that encouraged me to have conversations I had long avoided. For the first time, I found myself talking openly to friends and family about love, relationships, desire, and choice.
This conversation with her felt like an extension of that same shift. As a woman, I know discussing polyamory invites judgment and raised eyebrows. But that is precisely why this conversation matters.
In your book, you write about love, desire and intimacy with striking honesty – almost rebellious. How did you claim that freedom of thought and self-trust?
Fortunately, I burnt the legacies of silence and obedience that women are handed down, much before they dug their toxic roots into me. It must have been the indiscriminate and incessant reading – the writers from across time and geography planting seeds of disquiet and inquiry in me. To claim one’s freedom, one needs to...