Love in the Time a/Liberalization 'epic narrative of transpatriarchal migration' from the feudal ('joint') family to its 'nuclear' counterpart grounded in the capitalist state, as metonymic of the transition from the 'formal' to the 'real' subsumption of the Indian economy by capital. Signified by the English-language expression 'I love you/ this aspiration to 'the private', Prasad suggests, is mediated in Bombay 36 film through a new concept of romance; a concept of intimacy based on the idea of two individuals being totally a^d transparently accessible to each other. Following Prasad, I have elsewhere attempted a dialectical analysis of the love-story genre to explore a history of desire in Bombay film, mapped onto transitions in India's state-form.3 My contention has been that the shift occurring within Bombay's love-story genre from the 1950s to the 1980s reconfigures the earlier opposition between 'Indianness' and 'Westernization', the countryside/the city, into a generational conflict; an opposition between the generation of the 50s (India's 'socialist' moment) and the generation of the 80s (the moment of liberalization). Crucial to this reworking, I have argued, has been the changing configuration of the 'Indian woman', with the iconic rural belle of the 50s now being replaced by her ethnic-chic, cosmopolitan, upper-class/caste counterpart; the New Indian 'Woman' defined above all by the agency displayed by 'falling' in love. The thrust of my analysis of QSQTwill, consequently, be to identify the pressures generated by the new identity of the upper-class/caste Indian woman on the institution of the 'joint family' and its corollary, the 'arranged marriage.'4 ROMANCE AND THE NEW INDIAN WOMAN As a series of recent studies have noted, the 80s both in Bombay as well as the 'regional' centres saw the 70s 'middle' cinema expand to capture a commercial market. The explanation provided by the industry for this move was that the new romance films were providing 'clean entertainment'; clearing a space in the cultural terrain from the sensationalist violence spawned by the action cinema of the 70s. Thus the influential magazine India Today5 carried a feature titled 'Return to Romance'. Suggesting a range of reasons for the 'deluge of romance' in 80s Bombay, from the fading of the Bachchan persona to the common economic logic of hiring inexpensive newcomers, the article however concluded that though they were providing the much-needed respite from the violent anti-hero cinema of the 70s, 'romance' in the new love-stories had lost its sublimity: But there's no going back [to the 50s]. Love in the 80s is for the most part synthesizer love: it magnetizes the audience With hi-tech and hi-gloss, but not with soul and sensuality.... Love has lost its poignancy: it's become too accessible, too easy... That yearning which comes from separation, that old romantic concept of unheard melodies being sweeter, and the bitter-sweet agony of unrequited love, has evaporated with time. Accessibility killed it.... Now the boy and the girl are available to each other (Madhu Jain, 1990:139). Overriding all other markers of the New Age that had caused love to 'lose its mystery', Journal of Arts & Ideas