Love as an emotion is considered to be the most powerful. The strength a person gets by this emotion is unfathomable for an onlooker, and only the one who experiences it can understand it. “Love is Love” by Lomin Dolma Lama is a book that explores the strength this emotion can give to the characters involved in the stories, and the readers can understand it by the audience seat they have. The book, on the surface level, is a collection of short stories which are born in the streets of the author’s hometown, Darjeeling, but her cross-cultural experience among the queen of hills and the country’s capital gives the book a cosmopolitan touch. This gives “Love is Love” a sense of richness and profoundness even if the narratives are compact and concentrated.
“Love is Love” as a title may be suggestive of a collection of ordinary stories and as the author mentions that they are merely stories, anecdotes, and political essays, but the readers can only understand the depth the author explores when they grow through each one of them individually. Once they read the first story “Phulmaya,” they realize that Lama’s book is nowhere close to ordinary. Instead, it is a narrative born from the fragment of ancient heritage, and its relevance in the present due to universal human characters is unignorable. As the readers progress through the book, their hearts are stirred, they are in the pensive mode, they become an observer, and at times their flame of curiosity is lightened up. At the same time, they are witnesses to the whirl of emotions a person can experience in their lives, and they are also witnesses to the social issues where women are the routine victims. These, among other factors, make the book exciting and make the readers wonder what the author would have in store for them in the following story, anecdote, or political essay she would bring.
“Love is Love” has content that is close to the heart of the author’s hometown, but its relevance in universal light is undeniable. The author explores human nature, social issues like eve-teasing, questions the rules set by patriarchy, has the idea of bringing a revolution, and shares her vision of a utopian world. The book also carries the air of nostalgia and the sense of belongingness a person might feel when they are away from their home. In that way, the book may be relatable for the many people who have left their homes and reside in other cities for their education, work, or any other purpose. This widens the appeal of the book as those who are away from their homes would have an interest in reading it and also those who are in their homes so that they can understand the feelings of the other group.
The collection of 25 writeups in “Love is Love” is given a fictional framework at times, and at other times, it comes across as a work of non-fiction. However, in both forms, Lama presents her work in an equally convincing manner, without letting the readers have the slightest clue by the time they reach the end. This also makes the book exciting for the readers. The author arranges her content in a way that garners more attention from the readers, and they are not able to keep the book away unless they finish it. She keeps it short, concise, straightforward, focused and gives the details just enough to keep the readers updated. The absence of unnecessary diversion becomes another salient feature of her work.
“Love is Love” can be read by all readers, irrespective of their age or what they do. Many may consider the book to be an endorsement of the LGBTQ movement, keeping the cover in consideration, but as a whole, the book is a lot more than this basic. The saying, “Never judge a book by its cover,” becomes appropriately valid when one reads Lomin Dolma Lama’s “Love is Love.”
