The Vow

What do you do when the love stories you watch on the big screen and the rules of love you live by are opposite? In the first episode of Rough Translation's Love Commandos season, host Gregory Warner speaks with freelance journalist Mansi Choksi and NPR reporter Lauren Frayer to unpack the story of the Love Commandos. Together, they explore the ways in which the romantic promise of Bollywood musicals faded under the glaring violence that many young lovers couldn't escape.

Until a man named Sanjoy Sachdev stepped onto the stage of a popular TV show promising to fight for lovers. He had a group with the perfect name to do it: the Love Commandos.

In 2018, NPR correspondent Lauren Frayer visited the group's secret safe house. Several months into her reporting, the Commandos were brought down by some of the very couples they vowed to help. Rough Translation sets out to answer the questions surrounding Sachdev's case. Is he the person he promised to be? And what does his case mean for couples who go against the norm?

Additional Context:

• Read Mansi Choksi's book, The Newlyweds: Rearranging Marriage in Modern India.
• Listen to Lauren Frayer's 2018 piece on the Love Commandos.

Listen to Rough Translation wherever you get your podcasts, including NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and RSS.

Want to hear the next episode of Love Commandos a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.

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