Love Vs. Rituals & Provocation by Samra Kiyani The novel Love Vs. Rituals & Provocation is a stirring and thought-provoking study of how the social taboos and rituals affect the life of human beings. The author has brilliantly and very skillfully illustrated different forms of harassment and provocation and their impact on females both in the social setup and the workplaces where they are imperiled to serve. She has tried to establish that strength of character, determination and a sincere smooth upright sailing defeat the so-called rituals and provocation. True love, guided by clarity of mind, makes the otherwise vulnerable lot strong and resilient to combat all kinds of vices, seductions and immoral advances. The story is a bold, frank and deep insight into the societal attributes and manifestations which have affected, in the recent decades, a rapid transformation in human behaviors; a rejection of age-old customs, traditions and sarcastically called rituals; crumbling of the established moral code; disintegration of the social order; collapse of the niceties and mutual respect between male-female relations in their sober, serene and sublime diversity; and development of human animalism. All of this has resulted from socio-cultural imbalances. The book is in fact an unpleasant journey through a societal order rampant with hypocrisy, dualism and incongruity between moral standards – established through the ages and now set and developed by the societal agents of change.