The romantic landscape these days is riddled with landmines. Earlier the process was fall in love, get married. Now there are many more stages to a love story, and it need not even end in marriage. This is the age of Tinder, friends-with-benefits, and a whole lot of stages in between. But old fashioned romance is not going away, and one of the rules is ‘opposites attract.’ But after the attraction has taken place, love has been expressed (if not verbally declared), and if marriage is not on the cards, then where does the relationship go? Then, into the state of commitment, if irritants start creeping in, does love hit a roadblock?

In the not too distant past, people got married and then solved their problems; now problems have to be sorted first. Meherzad Patel’s new comedy, The Relationship Agreement attempts to negotiate how a love story would proceed today, with all the terms and conditions that enter the dating arena. The unnamed young couple (Danesh Irani-Sumona Chakravarti) in the play are a classic case of opposites attract. The young man is romantic and demonstrative, the young woman is practical to the point of being cut-and-dry. It seems like a match from hell, but the man wants to make a go of it, so they decide to draw up a relationship agreement that clearly states what each likes and dislikes.  A simpler version of a pre-nuptial agreement that is more about sharing assets in the case of a divorce. Such a document, even if it is not binding in anyway, would take the fun and spontaneity out of romance, but the two are willing to put all their conditions down on paper, complicating matters of the heart more than they already are. On the other hand, his father (Darius Shroff) and her mother (Meher Acharia Dar) make friends on Facebook and forge a friendship without any strings, taking each day as it comes.

Patel’s turns the serious subject into an uproarious comedy, with Danesh Irani excelling as the guy so in love with a girl who is not all that lovable, that he avoids being a doormat by a very small degree. His monologue on ‘his and her’ bathroom habits brings the house down because it is so relatable! For those who buy into the whole Valentine’s Day con of flowers, candy and teddy bears, the play could be a dampener. If the girl hates all this phoniness, and is just not mushy about romance, then is it still a proper love story? Patel seems to think it is, and the play says it is up to the couple to decide what works for them, and that there may be a watertight agreement, but there are still no rules.