Is Infidelity an Institutional Downside?: Monogamy, Very best Love, and Our Ethical View by Gehraiyaan

Publisher’s Note: FII’s #MoodOfTheMonth for February 2022 Redefine love. We are inviting submissions on the many planes of love throughout the month. If you would like to contribute, please email your articles to sukanya@feminismindia.com

It has been over a week since the release of the highly anticipated Bollywood film Gehraiyaan and social media is awash with reviews that are either overwhelmingly celebratory or downright critical. It’s not often that a film evokes such a polarized reaction as Gehraiyaan does, and when it does it’s important to see what elements have the power to polarize people so strongly and united.

Directed by Shakun Batra and starring Ananya Pandey, Deepika Padukone, Dhairya Karwa and Siddhant Chaturvedi, the trailer for Gehraiyaan says a lot in itself. Just like the trailer, the story seems to revolve around infidelity at the outset, and as such, you’ll likely view the story with a borrowed eye: that of relationships going astray and a hope for their resolution.

Perhaps as a viewer there are a number of expectations of the film, the most important of which is that in its treatment of infidelity the film would perhaps shed light on its rightful resolution and allow us to create a ‘101 Guide to Modern Love’ to have “. But history doesn’t. It ends on a cliffhanger. Just like real life, this role life love is messy, incomplete and indeterminate in the way it is experienced and performed.

Why is Gehraiyaan called and what does it say about us?

While viewers, on the one hand, appreciated the film’s nuanced and layered characters and its treatment of love and adultery, there was plenty to do fury on the other hand with generic statements like the film regurgitates the usual Bollywood love triangle drama or the fact that it’s sex laden and almost pornographic. But what stands out the most is the concern about “infidelity.”

Infidelity haunts us as a society, it is the line no one is allowed to cross, least of all women. But Alisha does it, Zain does it. And that annoys us. However, Gehraiyaan is rather nuanced in his treatment of infidelity. Alisha does not fall in love with Zain, and Zain does not reactively or reflexively fall in love with Alisha.

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Among many limitations of a monogamous relationship, one is the inability to have and have all of our esteem and belonging needs met by a single person. The idea of ​​a soul mate, which society instills in us through all mediums such as art, music, literature and morality, glorifies monogamous romantic relationships

There’s a context to that and stuff context is neither boredom nor thirst for adventure. Having a context doesn’t legitimize the act of cheating, but it does underscore that, contrary to popular belief, infidelity doesn’t stem from boredom or a quest for adventure or novelty. It stems from a lack of depth. Depth, as manifest and understandable in the multitude of its forms of expression.

Alisha doesn’t stop loving Karan. They share a history and an idea of ​​love, entangled in a shared childhood. Interestingly, Zain’s love for Tia is also tied into a specific context; the shared experience as two Indian adults in America chronicling adulthood together. And finally, Alisha and Zain’s love emerges in a different context, that of shared childhood traumas marked by dissonant parental relationships.

The commonality of the love experiences here is that the nature of the love experienced varies as the history of the people involved changes. In fact, all love is an attempt to fulfill a specific need and aspect of one’s personality. Perhaps this is where the idea of ​​polyamory becomes relevant and worth a detour.

Alternative relationships and our insistence on monogamy

Polyamory is the practice of having two or more romantic relationships at the same time with the consent and knowledge of all partners. It differs from polygamy (where a man has multiple partners without the consent of the parties involved), polygyny (where a woman has multiple partners without the consent of the parties involved), swinging (where committed couples swap partners for sexual purposes), and open relationships (where a married couple agrees to have a relationship outside of their primary relationship; often such an agreement is accompanied by a pre-established hierarchy of primary and secondary relationships).

These relationship alternatives described in relation to polyamory raise two concerns, firstly that there is a certain hierarchy within the partners and secondly that individual approval is on the fringes of the picture.

Also read: Gehraiyaan: A film that gives us complex, multi-layered femall characters

Among many limitations of a monogamous relationship, one is the inability to have and have all of our esteem and belonging needs met by a single person. The idea of ​​a soul mate, which society instills in us through all mediums such as art, music, literature and morality, glorifies monogamous romantic relationships.

In fact, when marriages or relationships that do not conform to the monogamous ideal are viewed with a certain contempt, it is not only a glorification but also a certain pedestalization. It’s worth pondering why society invests so much in promoting the ideals of monogamy.

Perhaps one of the reasons could be that monogamy complements patriarchy by allowing absolute sexual control over women. But it’s probably as many scholars believe that the genesis of monogamy may be rooted in the notion that motherhood is a biological truth and fatherhood is just a social truth. Determining paternity is therefore easier in monogamous marriages.

Obviously, then, there is also some economic motive for the act of property determination. As property entered the civilizational picture, it became important for men (owners) to pass it on to their rightful heirs. Monogamy then came to the rescue of early man.

Gehraiyaan also examines issues such as friendship, mental well-being, emotional health, and the manifestation of intergenerational trauma. In exploring these issues, it underscores a very important idea – that of emotional literacy. Here the title of the film resonates with its message

In the modern capitalist world, the continuation of monogamy has another causal factor. Laura Kippis, notes in her recent work that marriage is an insidious social construct used by capitalism to make us have children and work harder to support them.

Getting back to our point of departure: while nothing legitimizes the act of infidelity, perhaps it’s worth changing the way we look at it. Is infidelity a human problem or an institutional problem (where institution refers to marriage)? And if it’s the latter, perhaps freeing ourselves from the normative and dominant narratives of love and sexuality is contingent.

In Gehraiyaan, relationships are not polyamorous because there is no consent from the other partners, but perhaps our moral reluctance to view the resulting infidelity as a possible search for alternative and simultaneous personal connections stems from our reluctance to be conditioned by monogamy looking out as the only legitimate method of maintaining intimacy.

Gehraiyaan also examines issues such as friendship, mental well-being, emotional health, and the manifestation of intergenerational trauma. In exploring these issues, it underscores a very important idea – that of emotional competence. Here the title of the film resonates with its message. Emotional education, in its simplest terms, requires digging into the depths of one’s emotional state, literally all of one’s Gehraiyaan.

The film feels incomplete. Maybe that’s what it means. The lack of conclusions is similar to the entrances and exits of our lives. Incomplete and always in polemic with the last chapter.

Also read: Doob: No Bed Of Roses – An interpretation of the artistic genius’ life riddled with infidelity