Love Without Privacy

I recently finished Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto, and here are only a few, yet heavy, thoughts that stuck with me. Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom is not a book about love; it is love. The uncomfortable, unglamorous, everyday kind that doesn’t come with background music or perfect endings.

What the book is about

Em and the Big Hoom is set in a cramped Mumbai flat where a nuclear family navigates life with Em’s bipolar disorder. The Big Hoom is her husband, steady and quiet, and their two children watch, love, and cope as best as they can.

It’s not a book about mental illness. It’s a book about love that doesn’t come with exit signs.

Why did it feel so real?

Most of us have lived this way, in small houses where our lives intersect constantly. Pinto writes, “When you live in a small house, your lives intersect all the time. There’s no privacy, no way to conceal what’s happening. We had to live and love and deceive within earshot of each other.“

Wow. Isn’t it? It’s the reality of Indian homes, where walls are thin and secrets thinner.

Love without romanticism

What struck me most was the absence of giving up. When things got unbearable, they stayed. When Em’s illness became too much to bear, the Big Hoom explained it to their son simply: “If your mother had diabetes, what would they say? This is like diabetes. She’s not well. That’s all“.

No drama. No victimhood. Just love showing up every day.

Pinto writes, “Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up“.
Yet they orbited Em’s darkness because love is love is love.

The gift of conversations

One thing I didn’t expect was how education shaped not just their careers, but their ability to talk. They spoke about life, death, desire, and despair with a vocabulary that mental illness forced them to develop.

They learned to hold hard truths gently. To laugh when crying would break them. To say what most families silence.

The book made me think…

Parents aren’t perfect. They’re the architects of both your best and worst parts. You might love them fiercely, feel frustrated by them, or exist somewhere in between. But here’s the truth: they’re irreplaceable. Being around them, living within earshot of their humanity, that’s the journey. And it’s the one that changes everything.

Why should you read this?

If you’ve ever lived in close quarters with people you love and can’t escape, if you’ve watched someone battle their own mind, or if you simply want to understand what unglamorous love looks like, read this book.

It won’t give you answers. But it will make you feel less alone.