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    The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai
    The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai
    The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

    Written by Elizabeth Flock

    Narrated by Sunil Malhotra and Nicol Zanzarella

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different couples in today’s Mumbai.

    In twenty-first-century India, tradition is colliding with Western culture, a clash that touches the lives of everyday Indians from the wealthiest to the poorest. While ethnicity, class, and religion are influencing the nation’s development, so too are pop culture and technology—an uneasy fusion whose impact is most evident in the institution of marriage.

    The Heart Is a Shifting Sea introduces three couples whose relationships illuminate these sweeping cultural shifts in dramatic ways: Veer and Maya, a forward-thinking professional couple whose union is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage, made possible by an online matchmaker, blossoms into true love. Though these three middle-class couples are at different stages in their lives and come from diverse religious backgrounds, their stories build on one another to present a layered, nuanced, and fascinating mosaic of the universal challenges, possibilities, and promise of matrimony in its present state.

    Elizabeth Flock has observed the evolving state of India from inside Mumbai, its largest metropolis. She spent close to a decade getting to know these couples—listening to their stories and living in their homes, where she was privy to countless moments of marital joy, inevitable frustration, dramatic upheaval, and whispered confessions and secrets. The result is a phenomenal feat of reportage that is both an enthralling portrait of a nation in the midst of transition and an unforgettable look at the universal mysteries of love and marriage that connect us all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9780062799470
    Author

    Elizabeth Flock

    ELIZABETH FLOCK is an Emmy Award–winning journalist whose work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, and on PBS NewsHour and Netflix, among other outlets. She is the host of Blind Plea, a podcast from Lemonada Media about criminalized survival. Her reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center, PEN America, and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Her first book, The Heart Is a Shifting Sea, won a Nautilus Book Award for books that inspire and make a difference. She lives in Chicago and Los Angeles.

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    Reviews for The Heart is a Shifting Sea

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      While living in India, American reporter Elizabeth Flock began following middle class Indian couples in Mumbai. She ultimately wound up with three that she followed long term--Marwari Hindus Maya and Veer, Muslims Shazad and Sabeena, and Tamil Brahimins Ashok and Parvati. None of the couples have had a smooth path: Maya and Veer eloped against the wishes of their parents, Shazad and Sabeena have struggled with infertility, and Ashok and Parvati agreed to an arranged marriage after failed relationships.

      Flock does a good job interviewing the couples, though she uses a narrative style that blends her reporting and interviews with background information and commentary so it's not always entirely clear where the line is between them. She manages, through her long relationship with the couples, to get a remarkable level of detail and openness, including sex, miscarriages, and in-law disputes. All three couples have difficulties adjusting to the rapid pace of social change in Mumbai, in different ways: Maya wants independence, Shazad and Sabeena grieve as his father refuses to allow them to adopt a baby, and Parvati has trouble adjusting to married life.

      Overall, this is a good read, and Flock has been careful to do her background research and is aware of the limits of her reporting. She doesn't try to make grand observations about India or its traditions, but tries to keep herself as a more neutral observer and doesn't insert herself into the narrative.
    • 4/5
      The growing preference for love vs arranged marriage is a major sea change in the ever-stormy sands of social upheaval in India. As women become more educated, work outside the home, and take jobs in more liberal other countries, they become less willing to put themselves at the mercy of two sets of parents, as well as the astrologers who often have the final say in whether a match is made. In this story, the author delves into the courtship and marriages of three Mumbai couples - the first are Marwaris (known for their relentless drive for business success), the second a Sunni Muslim couple, and the third are Tamil Brahmin Hindus. Each pair, with some romantic experience prior to their marriages, eventually commits to a partner chosen by their parents - and the parents themselves end up being the greatest cause of problems and tensions for them. Mumbai, in all of its overwhelming growth, pollution, monsoons, and religious strife, is both a fantasy and a nightmare setting. The three couples share all their confidences with the author in a manner that is almost startling in its intimacy. It's both remarkable sociology and a powerful introduction to middle class Indian city life.