Arundhati Ghosh explores polyamory in India in All Our Loves
Arundhati Ghosh explores polyamory in India in All Our Loves
Writer Arundhati Ghosh discusses All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India, redefining love through consent, honesty, and diverse relationships in a monogamy-locked culture.
Writer Arundhati Ghosh talks about her new book, All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India, and loving many with honesty and consent in a culture shaped by monogamy. The project, shaped by the collaboration with Aleph’s Aienla Ozukum, aimed to give voice to polyamorous lives that are often silenced or misread in Indian society. Ghosh says the goal was not just to share experiences, but to dispel myths and challenge the stigma around loving more than one person with the consent of all involved. She describes the journey of writing as a balancing act between vulnerability and accountability, hoping the book helps those curious about polyamory see its joys and its struggles.
The core idea she speaks to is simple and provocative: desire and love can be shared across more than one relationship at a time, provided there is clear communication, consent, and care. When love transgresses borders drawn by patriarchy, tradition, and prejudice, the challenges intensify — but so do the opportunities to reimagine ethical intimacy. All Our Loves collects those stories, presenting a spectrum of experiences rather than a single template for “the right way” to love.
In shaping her perspective, Ghosh returns to two intellectual touchstones that shaped her thinking: Bell Hooks’s All About Love, which traced love through the lenses of gender, race, and class, and the Mahabharata, whose narratives illuminate power dynamics in personal and societal structures. These influences help frame polyamory as a politics of care, not merely a lifestyle choice. She also mentions Butter by Asako Yuzuki as a current reading companion for understanding vulnerability in relationships. Writing the book required holding space for interviewees’ vulnerabilities, navigating her own relationship experiences, and striving to keep writing with sanity and honesty.
All Our Loves is positioned as a courageous contribution to Indian literary conversation about intimacy, consent, and non-traditional family forms. The conversations it invites are not about endorsing a single model of love but about expanding the conversation to include voices that have long been unheard, with compassion and clarity.
