An Indian polyamorous ‘throuple’ is breaking free from the shackles of conventional marriage

Against the backdrop of a society where alternative relationship dynamics are often looked down upon, finding common ground and solace with more than one partner can be immensely powerful

It’s not often that you come across people who openly acknowledge the usually stultifying limits of monogamy, and also accept their own privilege in being able to look beyond the societal parameters of love.

For Mumbai-based Aashish Mehrotra, 36, Shweta Sangtani, 34, and Tanisha RK, 27, getting together as a ‘throuple’ was not a decision they made overnight after a magical epiphany. For starters, Shweta and Aashish had already been married well before they met Tanisha—neither of them had been in a non-monogamous relationship before.

“Aashish and I met on a dating app and hit it right off the bat,” Shweta tells me. “Within three months we got engaged, and got married soon after.”

Open communication channels

When did polyamory trickle in?

Aashish says that they didn’t even know that polyamory as a concept existed with that name. When they decided to open their marriage, both of them thought they were doing something which had never been done before in the history of relationships, only to realise soon that there was a word for it: polyamory.

“We started with the policy of don’t ask-don’t tell,” recounts Aashish. “But we soon realised that this was detrimental because not sharing whom we’re meeting or sleeping with created a lot of insecurities.” More than anything, both of them acknowledge that they are best friends and had each other’s best interests in mind. They opened their marriage in the first place because Shweta realised she couldn’t possibly always be conflicted if she was ever attracted to someone beyond Aashish.

“We were both clear that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together,” explains Shweta. “So it was never the lack of something that I was experiencing with Aashish that I wanted to seek in other places. It was simply about exploring newer connections.”

It was at this point that Tanisha entered their lives, as recent as the months just before the pandemic hit. A lot had to do with what Tanisha had felt in her previous relationship. So when her long-distance monogamous relationship ended in 2017, it was the time for her to truly introspect jaded ideas of what an ideal relationship could possibly look like. “I realised that maybe polyamory would be more supportive of my mental health needs,” she says. “I came back to India with the full intention of having these conversations with people. That’s when I also came across Aashish and Shweta through a common friend.”

Soon, Tanisha and Aashish started dating and the latter was always upfront about his marriage with Shweta. The way Tanisha saw it, this was the only way a relationship of this order could’ve worked.

“I was no stranger to Shweta even when I started dating Aashish because I’d first met them together at their party,” says Tanisha. “Aashish told me that he’d be comfortable with dating someone only if his partner, Shweta, could coexist so that he didn't have to lead double lives.”

This worked for Tanisha because one of her biggest fears upon encountering a space like this was ending up with someone who was lying to their partner about her and hiding her as some dirty little secret.

The transition to living together was just as seamless. This was the time when Tanisha and Shweta started hanging out together and everything seemed effortless—the conversations flowed, there was no inmate awkwardness and it was almost as if all three of them were operating on a similar bandwidth.

But aren’t there any insecurities still, between the three of them? All of them clarify that the whole reason they got into a polyamorous relationship was that there had been insecurities in their previous relationships. In Shweta and Aashish’s marriage, the policy of don’t ask-don’t tell was clearly not working and only served to trigger their anxieties about the unknown. The idea of being a throuple, mutually getting along with each other, was a beautiful escape from the claustrophobic pit of anxiety that had threatened them otherwise.

Navigating societal assumptions

What about their respective parents? While they both got along well with Tanisha, Aashish and Shweta were legally still a married couple. “When I told my parents about Tanisha, their first fear was whether Shweta and I were going to get divorced,” says Aashish. “So I allayed that desi parents’ fear first since I’ve been absolutely open with this at work or even with my extended family. However, there is also the privilege that I am a man, and a man having two cis-passing women is clearly celebrated. There is also a privilege of being upper caste, too, that I cannot discount.”

There was another aspect to Aashish’s interaction with his parents—this was the time that he came across as bisexual and they were clearly more concerned about the bisexuality bit. Any support for his polyamorous equation came later, once he had explained to them how it worked.

In the case of Shweta, some of her family members know that she is in an open relationship. While it is certainly not a taboo in her head, she won’t go out of her way to explain the dynamics to people who might not accept it. “So it’s not something that I offer as a disclaimer about myself or have explicit conversations about. On social media, I’m pretty much open about the same.”

All three of them run what they call a family business in the form of Sangya Project—an online pleasure store that also works in having conversations about the body, the multifaceted world of pleasure, relationships and everything in between.

Is there room for a fourth, fifth or sixth person in their lives, sharing this new space they have recently moved in? “If there are any additions, they will come in the form of furry creatures,” laughs Aashish, petting their dogs.

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