A Colorless Love Story
A message from the author:
Set in San Francisco and Kolkata, my novel is essentially a love story, but with colorism as a key theme, and, in parallel, a strong theme to pursue empathy in every interaction in our lives.
My book is a testimonial to colorism faced by millions of dark-skinned Indian women who are given lower status in the Indian society. Irrespective of how an Indian woman carries herself, irrespective of her education, or class, or talent, or sheer beauty, the first thing that makes a woman ‘acceptable’ in the Indian society is her skin color. It’s an undercurrent, often not-talked-about but subtle profiling which makes women with darker skin tone find it very hard to get respect they deserve.
I hope my voice makes you think about this deeply disturbing social issue. I also hope that the unshakable love between Abir and his lady love makes you fall in love again.
— Sid Chattopadhyay
Abir is a young software engineering star in San Francisco from India. When he meets the woman of his dreams at a party, he gets infatuated with her. She too falls for his charm and enigma, and soon, they want to get married and settle down in San Francisco. But their fairytale love story gets tragically cut short when his Indian family rejects and humiliates her due to her dark skin color. Their love story falls apart, and she separates from him for failing to protect her against his prejudiced family.
Abir is devastated by the colorism and lack of empathy displayed by his family and how it affected his life. Shattered by his failure to protect the love of his life, he sets on a spiritual life journey to seek and spread the message of empathy. He takes an online identity as “the empathy engineer” and devotes his time on TED talks and writing blogs to spread his ideas on how empathy can abate most prejudices in society.
Four years later, on a visit to India, when he is finally thinking of settling down again by marrying a woman arranged by his family, he bumps into his ex-flame serendipitously. But this time, she is with another man. What will happen to his unfinished love story now? Will he get a final closure from his past relationship, or will he end up breaking multiple hearts instead?