The Honeymoon

August 9, 2023·31 min·2 clips

Gaurav, who was told phones were banned for his own safety, says: 'If we had phones in that shelter, you would not have had to talk to us for this long — we would have shown you all the evidence.'

1. Rough Translation host Gregory Warner continues episode three of Love Commandos, picking up where Surya and Akanksha — an inter-caste couple from India — have arrived at the Love Commandos shelter in New Delhi. 2. The Love Commandos were founded by Sanjoy Sachdev, known to all shelter residents as 'Baba,' with co-founder Harsh Malhotra living across the street; journalist Mansi Choksi, who visited the shelter in 2016, joins as guest co-host. 3. The shelter — a dimly lit New Delhi apartment with fluorescent lights, cigarette smoke, mattresses on the floor, and three dogs named Sandy, Brownie, and Romeo — was Surya and Akanksha's first home as a couple. 4. Surya describes shelter life as unexpectedly joyful: seven couples shared the space at peak occupancy, playing Ludo, celebrating New Year's Eve with dancing, and listening to Sachdev read from the newspaper each morning. 5. Akanksha found moral grounding in Sachdev's invocation of Lord Shiva's inter-caste marriage to Parvati, which reframed their 'selfish' act of love as part of a sacred Hindu tradition. 6. Every incoming couple was told a foundational shelter rule: phones are confiscated to prevent GPS tracking by families and to block impulsive calls home during moments of doubt or longing. 7. Sachdev tells new couples: 'Kindly don't use your own minds' — framing total dependence on his judgment as the price of safety, backed by the cautionary tale of Abdul Hakim, a former resident allegedly killed by his wife's brothers after leaving the shelter against advice. 8. Daily life follows a strict schedule: alarm at 6 a.m., morning assembly with instructions from Harsh Malhotra, women cook and men clean, no naps, doors open at all times, no physical affection visible to others. 9. The no-sex rule is formally in place — Sachdev cites shared-room courtesy — though reporter Frayer reports all couples found workarounds and other residents accommodated them by turning away. 10. A second couple, Gaurav and Akriti — also inter-caste, with Akriti from a prominent political family of higher caste — arrived at the shelter after Gaurav saw Sachdev on YouTube and expected a non-profit safety organization. 11. Before Gaurav could set down his bag, the Love Commandos took his 40,000 rupees — approximately 500 USD and well above the average monthly Indian income — which Gaurav felt he could not refuse given his fear of Akriti's family. 12. Sachdev defends the variable fee structure by saying the Love Commandos must charge some couples more to subsidize couples who cannot pay at all. 13. While Surya framed mandatory chores as morally beneficial, Gaurav describes being required to clean Malhotra's private home and massage Sachdev's and Malhotra's feet — acts Sachdev justifies as a son's duty to an elder. 14. Gaurav says that when he challenged Sachdev's authority, he was subjected to casteist slurs about why a lower-caste man would bring an upper-caste woman to the shelter; other couples told Lauren Frayer they heard Islamophobic slurs and mockery of body types. 15. Gaurav alleges that Harsh Malhotra threw shelter dog Brownie at him, leaving a bite scar on his shoulder; a second witness corroborated this allegation in a police statement. 16. When Warner calls Malhotra with this allegation, Malhotra responds by showing a video from January 2019 of couples happily playing with the dogs — a denial tactic that Warner frames alongside the pattern of the shelter controlling its own image. 17. Lauren Frayer discovers that Sachdev had publicly posted an Instagram photo of Gaurav smiling at the dog Brownie — a photo taken without Gaurav's knowledge while he had no phone of his own. 18. Gaurav's fury at the photo is framed by Warner as revealing the shelter's central contradiction: it presented itself as freeing couples from their parents' narrative control while replacing that narrative with Sachdev's own story, told to the whole world. 19. The episode ends on journalist Mansi Choksi's account of visiting the shelter in 2016 and noticing Sachdev repeatedly hinting for money during what was supposed to be a rescue-call — discomfort that crystallizes her growing doubts about him. 20. The narrative tone shifts episode by episode from admiration to suspicion, modeled on Mansi's own initial admiration of Sachdev as 'the first one making forbidden love a political rallying cry.'

As heard by us

A shelter built to protect love becomes a place where love is regulated.

The Honeymoon follows Surya and a conksha as they arrive at the Love Commandos main shelter in New Delhi, where protection is shaped by daily routines, strict rules, and a founder who can come across more like an enforcer than a guardian.

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Listen if you want an intimate look at love inside a rule-bound shelter.

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