Platonic Marriage  (Paperback, Anjali Bhatia)

Ishika, a struggling actress with a string of disastrous relationships behind her, has given up hope of ever finding true love. She disdains the idea of marriage as a life insurance policy and being seen as a sex object by the men in her life. Mohan, a modest schoolteacher nursing a heartbreak that might never go away, has closed himself to the possibility of ever finding love ever again. With love, he has also shut out the prospect of sexual intimacy for good. Being in their thirties and sharing an uneasy equation with Mumbai—the city in which they have faced their demons—Ishika and Mohan strike up an unlikely friendship where both expose their deep emotional wounds to each other. Eventually this prompts Mohan to propose a Platonic Marriage: one in which they will be heartfelt companions to each other on mental, emotional and spiritual levels—all except sexual. After several reservations, Ishika accepts Mohan’s proposal. But will their marriage survive without the industrial adhesive of sexual intimacy...or is their lifelong experiment headed for a premature end? Will Ishika and Mohan succumb to the tug of desire, or does life have even bigger surprises for them than having found each other?