India, March 1 -- "I can physically not deal with the intensity of this show," pressing the pause button, I texted my fellow screen addict. Needless to add, I spent an entire day binge-watching The Museum of Innocence, the nine-episode adaptation of Orhan Pamuk's novel with the same title.

Can innocence only exist in a museum, after all? Perhaps.

Can we express desire only mediated by fetishising objects? Perhaps.

Can emotional vulnerability be risk-free? Perhaps.

The "love story" in Pamuk's novel, set in the Westernised society of Istanbul of the 1970s and 80s, is closer to us than we might acknowledge. Kemal's love for Fusun causes destruction that we are only now beginning to find the vocabulary for. He's neither a hero nor a villa...