India has 73 million single women. What is love in their lives like?

The rains that everyone had warned me of, which were said to be the stuff of nightmares, having caused typhoons and cyclones that can wreck civilisation, had somehow passed. Now the only thing that remained was a rather spooky thunder, so loud it rattled your bones through the walls of the old houses in Kolkata, like the one I was in. I had walked upstairs to the terrace to see flashes of electricity across the sky and, shaking with the booming thunder like a scared child, had almost immediately shut the door to the terrace and gone downstairs.

Empty noises had never threatened me thus. My mind drifted once again to India’s 73 million single women, hundreds of whom had shared their stories with me. I had given a talk to a group of them on why it was difficult for people to love strong women.

Now, free in many ways, having chosen their freedom, their PTSD was like this scary thunder, about now harmless past lives but still ringing loud in the lives of these single women. My elderly journalist friend and his wife are visiting Kolkata from Delhi, and they text me, living up to their promise of showing me Kolkata. First, we have lunch at a Bangladeshi restaurant close by and then head to Kumartuli, the historic potters’ area, which is around 300 years old.

But according to legend or rumour, depending on who you ask, it is far older. It is a special place and the energy is instantly infectious, mesmerising even to atheist tourists and observers of culture, let alone believers .