Intemperance

A woman who has left two husbands announces that she will mark her 55th birthday with a swayamvar, the ancient custom in which suitors compete in feats of will and strength for a princess's hand. She is a respected intellectual in an American town who once claimed to be beyond something as petty as love. She knows the plan will invite public ridicule, but her self-regard and her libido are undimmed, even as disability, fading looks and a weakness for cake take their toll on her body.

Surprisingly, people turn up to back her. A wedding planner hunting for the next enchanting thing signs on, and so does a disability rights activist making a documentary. Her own grown son joins in too, reluctantly. The Men's Rights Movement protests, angry at her treating men as objects. Goddesses and princesses of the past drop in, some to knock sense into her and others to cheer her on.

She must also face a harsh love story from her ancestry, one threatened by the caste system, which left a generational curse on family members given to excess of spirit. As the whole scheme turns into a spectacle, she has to decide what feat a suitor must perform to deserve her wrinkling hand. What would define a better kind of masculinity, and what would it take for her to trust in love's tenderness?

Intemperance is a satirical feminist folktale, and also a reflection on how one might go past all good sense and still find love.