Reviewed: “The Other Man” by Farhad J. Dadyburjor

Farhad J. Dadyburjor’s The Other Man is a story that delivers the message that it is never too late to claim the identity you want your life to have. It may be absolutely terrifying to face family, friends, and society at large and announce who you want to be and who you are, but you should do it. Try to do it as best you can.

The Other Man shows that the only wrong answer is in living by someone else’s definition and denying yourself.

Dadyburjor’s novel is set in Mumbai, India and follows a man named Ved Mehra on his ‘better late than never’ path to knowing himself freely. Ved is thirty-eight and single, much to his mother’s dismay. But he is the heir to a business empire and quite the catch in a society where marriages double as business mergers and little else matters. Although Ved is gay and has had extended relationships with men, not entirely healthy ones, no one in his family knows and so he agrees to the marriage arranged by his mother to Disha Kapoor, the daughter of another businessman in the city.

In a sense, he agrees so as not to rock the proverbial boat on the publicly smooth waters of Indian society, a society which is only just beginning to accept that LGBT+ lives and loves are not criminal acts.

But then, on a hookup app, he meets an American named Carlos and, as is so common in both fictional and real life romance, everything changes.

The Other Man is about Ved recognizing the spark in himself that Carlos helps to light, learning that he cannot live as he’s ‘expected’ to live, and forcing himself to say so. And the payoff of all that turmoil is that Ved comes to understand that by not asking the questions until then, not letting the people he cares about answer for the themselves, he didn’t know that he could have the sort of romantic love he wants and the familial love that he needs.

In a way, The Other Man is a coming of age sort of novel, even though Ved is coming up on middle age. And it is done so well, with the rich and vibrant fabric of Mumbai as a supporting character to the heart and soul of Ved, Carlos, Disha, Ved’s parents… that is to say what it means to accept, to understand, and to love.