Where can people in love go in Delhi: Ravish Kumar

The short love stories are practically love triangles – the two lovers and the city of Delhi being the main protagonists.
The bite-sized single paragraph love stories by journalist and author Ravish Kumar are firmly embedded in the Delhi of the everyday. Not for him the grand, monumental, and famous landmarks like the Qutub Minar, or the recognizable lanes of central Delhi.The stories navigate through the Brapullah flyover instead.
Ravish read from his book Ishq Mein Shahar Hona at the Times Lit Fest Delhi on Monday, along with Vineet Kumar who read from his Ishq Koi News Nahin. They call this short format of stories “Laprek” – an acronym for Laghu Prem Katha (Short love story). Ravish and Vineet, along with Girindra Nath Jha, had been writing their Laprek for an online audience on their Facebook feeds since 2012, before publisher Satyanand Nirupam spotted them. Ravish calls their stories “low budget ka pyaar” (low budget love). Written variously in the middle of traffic jams, and even public loos by Vineet’s own admission, the little stories have now been published as a compilation.
The love stories the two read out were centered on mundane daily tasks like shopping in Sarojini Nagar, riding the metro, and having momos from a Lajpat Nagar street corner. Lines like “Tum green line waale kabhi rapid line waalon ko nahin samajh paoge,” (You green line people will never understand the rapid line ones) drew much laughter and applause from the audience.
“If somebody falls in love in Delhi, where do they go? In the Delhi of coffee table books and NCERT textbooks, I would see the monuments the streets of old Delhi. I came here and had to familiarize myself with Govindpuri. And I realized the various Aggarwal Sweets corners are much more useful landmarks than the monuments,” said Ravish, before launching into a story about a couple struggling to find an intimate moment in an autorickshaw.
Despite the city of Delhi being the centerpiece of the stories, they retain a strong sense of being outsiders from smaller towns. Distant from the sparkly and posh world of India Habitat Center, and winding their way through Rithala in the metro. “There was always a city versus village dichotomy in what we would read, where the village was all pure and the city was the den of evil. We wanted to break that sense,” says Vineet.