The Heart Asks Pleasure First
I’ve always believed that the book finds you. Some come and make a home for themselves in your bookshelf, and others instantly cradle between the grip your fingers and your fixed gaze. Karuna Ezara Parikh’s ‘The Heart Asks Pleasure First’ found me in January of 2021, when the global COVID-19 pandemic had completed 10 months and we were trying to make sense of what collectively our lives had become. It had found me at a time when I was very willing to give up on love stories – heck, maybe on love itself. "Longing. Is there a fuller word in the world? Tell me, is there an emptier one?" I couldn’t curtail myself from reading even a single day. And like anything which is addictive, I had a hard time snapping out of the world she had created in those 316 pages when I finished. Anyone who’s been in love knows that when love grips you, you find it hard to live even one day without communicating with each other – and that is the same effect the story of an Indian and Pakist