What’s your passion?

I watched the ‘Million Dollar Baby’ yesterday. For the zillionth time. Every time I watch it, I feel Maggie Fitzgerald’s passion so strongly. She’s a raging bull, more in the head than in the body; her interminable struggle and intensity concealed in her reclusive calmness. She’s the one you’ll pass a hundred times on the street and probably never notice - not her, not her struggle, not her pain, not her passion, nothing; we don’t have time for the below best; how can we spare for the inconspicuous and mundane? An inferno grabs attention, not incinerating garbage.

As I watch the screen, with each punch she delivers, not to the crunching jaw or a rupturing cartilage of an opponent, not even to a punching bag but to the oppression of circumstances, I see a tiny fighter dancing in her footwork trance against a twin headed Goliath called destiny and life, not giving up, not giving in but just growing and growing and growing with her tired beautiful smile.

And for the first time, I wonder; why boxing of all things? Sounds unlikely and a bit unrealistic for a downtown waitress, doesn’t it? What got her to it in the first place? Was it just a survival instinct to fight back; well she had enough reasons and opportunities to do so. Fight, fight, fight. Destroy, break, suffer, die, win! Did the monster of revenge whisper this every single day in her innocent and naïve ears?

No matter how many times you pull a web down, a spider relentlessly constructs it again, painstakingly or otherwise. Is web building its passion then? And does it enjoy it; can it survive without doing it? Your guess is as good as mine. We, robotically wake up every single day and go about doing our chores, going to office, earning money, eating, sleeping and repeating. These acts of necessity, are they shards of passion? I hope not.

What defines passion then? Do we find it or does it find us? Can passion capriciously change from one thing to another; does our ability to be successful at it or not explain it? How does one identify it? Does it just strike us one fine day, like love and lightning? Is it something that we’ve loved for a very long time? Are the reasons for loving it selfless; do the reasons matter? Is it something that we’re good at? Is it self-driven or imposed?  Or have we just trained our mind like the thousand other things to tell us that this is it?

I think the answer lies in how truthful and honest we are to our feelings when we do things. There are very few times when we are really ourselves, and not what the situation wants us to be. We just replace masks, one after another as we move through the proceeds of life; abandoning passion among other things in the crowded alleys routine.

To me passion is something that invigorates you from within. Other factors and others become inconspicuous when you are at it. It is one of the few things you enjoy and do even when no-one notices or is interested; it’s unpretentious. Learning, falling, being broken and disappointment are inevitable, yet you nurture it. It will entice you into that meditative trance difficult to break free from; it’s important to feel that connection.

Unconditional love couldn’t find a better example. This love, if real, is one of the purest and interminable forms. The world, its disparaging taunts fade, as obdurately you refuse to budge and give in. It makes you feel good about yourself. It’ll test you though, rest assured, time and again, relentlessly and demand nothing less than all you’ve got. And the rest depends on how much you are ready to give to it.

That faint touch of the extended chest at the finish line, the completion of the last piece of the quartet, that final punch that brings your opponent down to his knees; the satisfaction cannot be recorded – it is not the last, it never will be the last. It goes on and even when one is incapable later in life, it stays in the mind till the last breath.

Pink Floyd were passionate about their music; they didn’t create music for the world.  They believed in what they were doing and just created lasting melodies that have made them so beautiful, unique and enchanting.

Passion - you can’t physically embrace it, it can’t smile back but the pleasure it can give is like a mental orgasm.

So what’s your passion?




Picture courtesy

© Million Dollar Baby image - https://www.altfg.com/film/million-dollar-baby/

© Pink Floyd image - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pink_Floyd_(1971).png

© Runner image -https://www.boston.com/news/boston-marathon/2019/04/15/boston-marathon-2019-photos

The end of the affair by Graham Greene – A book review

A few days ago, I met a gentleman or rather the gentleman met me. As I sat quietly with a book, about to start reading it, he settled himself in the seat beside me. It was rather eccentric of him to start speaking the very next moment and say that he knew a lot about me and my thoughts. I smiled at first and knew it was now time to look the other way but he persisted. He kept speaking without looking at me. And what he said with each utterance not just intrigued but shocked me. I sat there, hypnotized, listening helplessly.

Just as he had come unannounced, he left after his soliloquy, without bidding adieu and I sat there feeling naked and exposed, feeling heavy; my emotions, thoughts, doubts, affairs, my love and hatred, jealousy and pity whirling in eddies of wind right where he had sat.

And as I finish this engrossing book, I know it was Greene that I’d met.

And I know that I will read this book again; probably ten times, even more. It’s a treasure that I’ve not had to hunt for; it’s a treasure that has found me. I usually highlight beautiful thoughts in books and weave them in my review but amusingly, I ended up highlighting almost the entire book. It’s pure in its beauty and ugliness and madness. It’s for everyone in love, out of love, married or just human. It’s for everyone who loves and has innumerable questions for God. It’s about your fight against love, for it, against and for your understanding of His mysterious ways. And as you’re left deprived of answers at the end of this mental entanglement, you inanely end up grinning that there are others, like you, who are capable of the same immorality in the helplessness and powerlessness of the situation, as if that is even justified. It’s a mirror for lovers and what you see, isn’t physical.

I’d thought I dare not write a review for this one but have ended up doing just that, if this can be called one. All I feel as I keep it back on my shelves is the universe trying to tell me something; something very strong. And it isn’t a whisper; it’s a loud and constant yell asking me to suspend judgments and believe. I’ve been made to read this one for a reason.

I love a butterfly. Should I just watch and admire it from a distance even though my heart longs to possess it? Or should I attempt to capture and keep it or should I let it go? Will it ever come to me, to stay forever or just tease and flit around? Maurice Bendrix never got his answers, why would I; surely the orchestrator has.

My rating: 10/10


Image copyrights

© Graham Greene - https://www.businessdestinations.com/bd-portrait/graham-green-our-man-around-the-globe/

© Book cover - https://epublib.info/the-end-of-the-affair-by-graham-greene/

Will we ever learn?

Will we ever learn?

About a thousand and a half people assembled outside a Masjid near Bandra station on the 14^th Apr 2020. And by any mean, it didn’t seem to be a capricious move; rather a well planned one. Someone had been messaging them since the last 4—5 days to gather at Bandra station; they were to be facilitated to go home. Really? It wouldn’t be distressing news on a normal day, but to see a mob in the midst of a lockdown left everyone distraught. Let’s try and break this up.

Who were these people?

These people were workers and labourers, migrants mostly from Malda in West Bengal. Malda, by the way, is near the India Bangladesh border, so for all we know they might even be illegal Bangladeshi migrants, in Mumbai to earn their livelihood.

And how do we know that they were mostly workers from West Bengal? Because that’s what’s been reported by the reporters on ground. Now, we know that it’s not possible to have asked every person present there where he/she was from and then draw a graph. However, my concern is why wasn’t there a single interview or media coverage of the labourers, why weren’t questions asked directly to them and have answers shot on a camera like is already done; was there something to hide?

And a religious person dressed in green was addressing them and mentioning their God again and again. How did he know that most of them were from a particular religion? If I wake up tomorrow and see a crowd of thousands gathered outside my building, I wouldn’t know what religion they belonged to unless their attire gave it away or unless I was told so. And why would I ask them about their religion in the first place; why should that be my focus?

Why did they gather there?

Was it a protest? They had been receiving messages for the last 4-5 days on WhatsApp asking them to gather at Bandra station if they wanted to go home. They wanted to go home and be with their families.

To empathize, they were probably cramped up in confined spaces, 4-5 living in each and if they were daily wage labourers, where were they getting their food from. I don’t think they were even carrying their ration cards.

We, amidst this lockdown are safely tucked in our 1,2,3 BHK houses, cleaning our sneezes with tissues and throwing them in a lidded dustbin like Amitabh Bachan says, some are working out extensively and vulgarly displaying their bodies on online posts, someone’s showing a mosquito bite – wow, and a few are exploiting and rediscovering their culinary skills.

What do we really expect from these poor people though? Die before they die? Starving to death in confinement? Was food really being made available to them?

Were they foolish enough to not know that there could be lathi charge by the police, that there could be a stampede? Educated or not, I find it a bit difficult to believe that these poverty stricken workers braved the act on an impulse.

Even the quietest and calmest of children break-down or give it back at a certain point to the bullies; there is always a trigger. What was it in this case? And who provided it? And why was it provided – a political move, to bring unrest or to really help these people (that really sounds ridiculous in the current circumstances)?

Having said and asked that, none of them looked to be in a hurry; they seemed to be dressed well and more importantly it wasn’t inconspicuous that they were there without any luggage. Isn’t that surprising now? And why gather outside the station? Did they really intend to be sent home or were just masquerading for an ulterior agenda?

These are the questions, I think we should be asking before passing our judgments.

How did they get there?

Now this is one of the million dollar questions. We step out today and there are police barricades everywhere asking questions, discouraging social interaction, policemen carrying lathis, making arrests. So, how then did around fifteen hundred people appear all of a sudden outside the Masjid; how were they allowed. Could it be possible without the complicity of authorities? Now who are the authorities? The police, politicians, religious leaders, fake news specialists?

And why should they believe you?

And while all this was happening, the concerned rulers of the state were safe in their barricaded and protected houses thinking why this happened and what’s to be done. They surely took their time. A few blamed the centre. They were probably conducting internal meetings to decide on what was the best thing to say to the camera. The best thing!

It was frivolous of them to address the crowd on television saying that they’ve come to our state, were welcome to stay here and would be protected. What a farce. Why should they be believed and trusted? Didn’t they do everything possible to drive away these very people from the state? And would this have happened if these workers felt protected in the first place?

My friend works for an NGO and they’ve tied up with a food delivery company to create a platform where the needy can request for food during this lockdown and people who want to give donations can reach out to them. Daily, on our television screens, we are seeing lot of NGOs and good Samaritans doing the same. Shouldn’t the BMC, one of the richest governmental institutions, be interceding and doing more in this time of crisis? We aren’t asking for much – let the skyrocketed toll money you’ve collected from us go to them. At least that; it’d suffice.

And what are the opposition and other parties doing?

Is the task of an opposition just to oppose and excoriate the government in power? Can’t they get their hands dirty and be on the ground lending a helping hand or do they deem it enough to denounce others on television screens in pointless debates?


But there’s a more basic issue here. Things like these have always been orchestrated, probably a million, zillion times in the past. And every time, the people of this country or any country have seen who suffers finally. Read and listen between the lines when people of God and people of power invigorate you to go overboard, apply that uncommon common sense. Don’t make WhatsApp your God of information. Think when something is said to you, think of the repercussions, think if there are other ways to highlight and condemn things. Have love for the country; in no other country are people of all religions let to thrive.

Is this virus, pandemic showing us the true us in more ways than one?

Be a rebel but with a cause. Don't cause panic, don't let people suffer because of you.
Image copyright - © https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/migrant-workers-keen-to-return-to-villages-gather-outside-mumbais-bandra-station-defying-lockdown/article31340674.ece

When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – A book review

Christopher Bank is a celebrated detective in London but the one case that has always been haunting him is the mysterious/enigmatic disappearance of his parents when he lived in Shanghai. As an investigator, he relentlessly gathers facts and clues to substantiate his theories and connections; and after all these years he is closer in his pursuit than he ever was to reveal the truth and get them back, he thinks. He thinks! But little does he know, for the puzzle box he’d opened years ago and the pieces he’d been putting together, the rules of the game had been changed and the actual picture had already been put together, stacked somewhere unsafely in one of the horrendous dusty shelves of life. That he was a part of this altered and orchestrated puzzle never occurred to him; how would it? 

What he finally finds out is not just tragic but horrible. He himself is a case that has been solved years ago. An intelligently written book, I liked the style where every character is introduced in a sort of casual and informal manner as if you knew them from before.

And in these meandering lanes of search are intensities, a love for someone not liked, a passionate hatred for a true yet unrequited love, and a loathing nurtured to grow so strong that the result is a shattering of all boundaries of moral cognizance.

We are lucky. Most of us, in our lifetimes, are fortunate to get away committing small atrocities of power, hatred, jealousy and the likes. And we are forgiven. Or they’re never found out. Or they’re forgotten. We are indeed favoured to not be presented with empowered situations where we realize our power over someone or a situation and are equipped to exercise it surreptitiously. If this weren’t true, the number of encaged lurking demons within ourselves would surprise us, they with their evil piercing fiery eyes and devilish grin, swooshing around in an unsettled trance all ready to tear down and rip apart at command. It would not only scare and shame us as we sit there lost in despair, finding it hard to believe we were ever capable of this abominable mess.

Beware and be thankful.

My rating – 8/10

Images courtesy:
Book cover – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28923.When_We_Were_Orphans
Kazuo Ishiguro - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/15/557217635/nobel-laureate-kazuo-ishiguro-once-wrote-a-screenplay-about-eating-a-ghost

Troilus and Cressida by Geoffrey Chaucer – A book review

Written in the 14^th century, ‘Troilus and Cressida’ is considered Chaucer’s greatest poem, the other of his works of imminent importance being ‘The Canterbury Tales’.

Very few love stories are straightforward; well, are there any at all?

The time is during the Trojan war. Troilus, a Trojan prince sees the beautiful Cressida, a widow and instantly falls in love. Cressida is allowed to stay in the Trojan city, in spite of her father Calchas’s act of treason.

In this story by Chaucer, neither Troilus nor Cressida plays as strong and important part as Pandar, Cressida’s uncle and Troilus’s friend. It’s almost ugly and reprehensible how Pandar plays a pimp (it’s not me, it’s Pandar who calls himself one) to Cressida and guilefully lures her to the arms of Troilus. The kettle seems hotter than the tea as he creates situations and orchestrates incidents to make them come together, even to the extent of getting them to bed. His motive for this excitement is unclear. He deceives not only Cressida but also the hands that feed him, his master, the king and his family.

Troilus, the bravest of warriors, comes across as an incapable weakling, leaning on Pandar for everything, a pushover who wants in the smallest of difficulties of the heart to die than to face and fight. But who’s to blame in the matters of the heart when questions are many and answers few and unconvincing.

“If love is naught, O God, why feel I so?

If love is aught, what nature then hath he?

If love is good, whence cometh all my woe?

If love is bad, it seems then strange to me,

How every torment and adversity

That comes from love, itself with joy doth link,

For still I thirst the more, the more I drink.”

It doesn’t take much for Pandar to entice Cressida to fall for the great Troilus and she’s even ready for a secret affair, hidden from society. No mention of her dead husband, no memories, no guilt is presented to the reader. Her selfish justification for falling in love with Troilus is:

“What should I do? Shall I not have some fun?

Shall I not even love, if so inclined?

Why not, I’d like to know! I’m not a nun!

What if my heart a resting place should find

Upon this knight, the best of all mankind,

If I preserve my honor and my name,

I see no cause in that of harm or blame!”

And then comes the betrayal. Cressida has to go back to her father in Greece as a war exchange. She very easily convinces Troilus against his wishes of eloping and promises him to return but once there, her heart changes as easily as the hues of the approaching sunset as she settles for the Greek Diomedes. Convenience and needs become more important than the dear’s feelings. She even forgets the favour the Trojan Lords had done to her when they gave her shelter and protection in spite of her father’s betrayal. Like father, like daughter! And to wreck havoc to the lover’s heart, she gives the brooch gifted by Troilus to Diomedes.

Debating on her soul aye up and down

The words of this impetuous Diomede,

His high estate, the peril of the town,

Her loneliness and all her pressing need

Of friendly help, and thus began to breed

The reasons why, the simple truth to tell,

She thought it best among the Greeks to dwell.

This is yet another story of betrayal, of how convenience, practicality and an uncaring self obsession, without much time to lose, without much effort, without much remorse or guilt, shamelessly shuns love and defends itself in its doing. Can it get any more heartless? Practicality, hahaha – thy are death for the lover, a piercing arrow for the soldier guarding a heart full of love, a dagger of brutality. If Chaucer were alive, he’d have known so many Troilus’s and Cressida’s still exist out there, only their ways and expressions have changed.

Everything can be justified but what do we do with it? You justify your broken promises but does the pain understand that, does it grow any less? No.

…Recalling, too, that love to widely known,

Yields bitter fruit, though sweetest seed be sown.

 A prayer for all lovers of this world.

And pray for those that dwell in love’s despair,

From which they never hope to be restored;

And pray for them who must the burden bear

Of slanderous tongue of lady or of lord;

Pray God that he the faithful may reward,

And to the hopeless grant a quick release

And bring them from unrest to lasting peace.

My rating – 6/10


Image copyrights:

Book cover - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/26563/troilus-and-cressida-by-geoffrey-chaucer-translated-by-george-philip-krapp-introduction-by-peter-g-beidler/

Geoffrey Chaucer - https://www.sunsigns.org/famousbirthdays/d/profile/geoffrey-chaucer/

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell – A book review

Dear Jason Taylor

Hope you’re doing well.

Yesterday, I chanced upon this big fat green book and realized that it was about you. Thank you for sharing about the thirteenth year of your life – As Madame Crommelynck puts it ‘Ackkk, a wonderful, miserable age. Not a boy, not a teenager. Impatience but timidity too. Emotional incontinence.’

I had never heard of a place called Black Swan Green in Worcestershire. A few pages into your story and I thought, ‘Is this going to be another ‘Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha’?’ Have you read it? It’s by Roddy Doyle and is about a boy like you.

I know you stutter but I’m sure you’ll get over it. I know how ugly people can get when they discover that; it’s difficult yeah. I like the way you have interspersed incidents and situations across chapters; they seem like short stories but are yours and are interwoven into that one year. I think that’s super duper. They’re full of discovery and adventure. I understand being a part of the herd is important, else you’re treated like a pariah dog, and a very few can stand against it and in turn handle and survive the bestowed agony but I’m proud of you Jace.

I’m sorry but I have to say this – as I read your accounts, a few of your rambling thoughts and derived wisdom seemed a bit too much or unreal for a thirteen year old but yes, on further pondering over it myself, I felt it’s possible; it all depends on what and how much and when and how you’ve seen things. There is more wisdom packed in your thoughts than in most self-help books I’ve read. I particularly liked this one - Me, I want to kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.

You’ve experienced a lot and what I like is the clarity with which you have expressed your thoughts and the happenings; there doesn’t seem to be a clouding between the incidents and their recordings. Friendship, your first smoke, your first kiss, the losing of a priced possession, the near loss of innocence, being bullied to the verge of breaking down, the finally doing the right thing; it’s all there. I liked ‘Solarium’ the best; Madame Crommelynck comes across as a cranky old woman but I’d have loved to meet her; she came across as someone who doesn’t mince words or at least now doesn’t. I read names like Robert Frobisher and Vyvyan Ayrs in your memoirs, related to Ms. Crommelynck and that reminds me that I’ve read these names before, probably in a book called the ‘Cloud Atlas’. I simply love her thoughts on beauty and poetry –

…‘T.S. Eliot expresses it so – the poem is a raid on the inarticulate. I, Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, agree with him. Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art.’ She put another cigarette in her mouth and this time I was ready with her dragon lighter, ‘fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if is themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, clichés of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is. Test this. Attempt a definition now. What is beauty?’

…‘Difficult?’ (Her ashtray was in the shape of a curled girl, I saw.) ‘Impossible! Beauty is immune to definition. When beauty is present, you know. Winter sunrise in dirty Toronto, one’s new lover in an old café, sinister magpies on a roof. But is the beauty of these made? No. Beauty is here, that is all. Beauty is.’

Sometimes relationships are just a name and not what they seem. Just like Black Swan Green – you mentioned there never were any swans there – neither black, nor green, nor white – no swans. Well, sometimes people are also not what they seem. I’m sorry to hear about your parents and particularly about Ross Wilcox; do you think he deserved what he got? Your stories hint a lot of karma; do you believe in it? And sometimes, I hope you agree, we too aren’t what we put on display – the swan surfaces because it’s beautiful and intriguing in the midst of others but it disappears when we’re alone. I’m glad you met the gypsies – our hatred towards them is the same as theirs towards us, only the perspectives are different. And when you heard from them and I from you, it surprised me about the things they said – so true, we were never shown the mirror.

There – you’ve got me contemplating like you. When I started this letter to you, I didn’t know what to write and like always ended up writing a lot. So now, here, I stop. Someday, I’ll read you again. Take care.

Madame Crommelynck talking about herself

‘It is difficult to avoid, yes.’ Madame Crommelynck kept her eyes on Robert Frobisher. ‘This girl wants my forgiveness, before she dies. She begs me, “I was eighteen! Robert’s devotions were just a … a… flattery game for me! How could I know a famished heart will eat its mind? Can kill its body?” Oh, I pity her. I want to forgive her. But here is the truth.’ (Now she looked at me.) ‘I abhor that girl! I abhorred her all my life and I do not know how to stop to abhor her.’

My rating: 8/10

Image courtesy

Book cover - https://www.kaiandsunny.com/publishing/22_black_swan_green_hb.php

David Mitchell - https://stuttertalk.com/tag/black-swan-green/

The sea, the sea by Iris Murdoch - A book review

I’ve been wondering since I picked up the book; why ‘The sea, the sea’, why not just ‘The sea’? And as I read the last few words, I guess I know now. It’s a call of despair, of longing, of a melancholic meditation where it’s a fruitless, failed attempt of breathing right and keeping your eyes closed and trying to understand and believe and trust things and situations that you don’t want to but probably must; numerous thoughts like wild waves only thrashing you against the abrasive rocks, destroying your meditation, your peace if there is any.

Is LOVE a four letter word? Let’s not waste time here - it IS a four letter word. And so is PAIN and HURT. Ask Charles Arrowby, an imperious theatre stalwart, loved and despised equally by the marionettes in his life. And almost always, as he pulls the strings, they remain taut for a long time and don’t really break till they do. And still his so called friends, colleagues, past love interests and James, the only family he has, cling to him - a despot who steers relationships, manipulates them, breaks them with an unflustered detachment.

Charles has moved to ‘Shruff’s end’, a house he’s bought by the sea for his self-imposed retirement from the theatre and all people. He’s decided to peacefully write his memoirs here and spend the rest of his life in solitude. But ‘Iris Murdoch’ won’t leave him alone. She places his life back to him when he thinks he’s already lived it. Charles comes across Hartley, his childhood sweetheart, who’d run away from him without a trace or explanation then. Cupid is cunning and doesn’t see age (Charles is above 60) or a marriage to be a shield for his arrows; he only strikes.

Which one is funnier, the heart or the mind? A drowning man clutches to a straw; Charles clutches to his memories of Hartley, to the play of fate. He now sees why he’s come to this place, of all places, a connection that existed, exists so strong; how can he let go of it now? What unfolds is a tenacious contrivance; Charles plays God, destines his own destiny and that of others, primarily Hartley; his unshaken beliefs and ramblings silencing the shrieking thoughts and woes of others. Does a despot know that s/he’s a despot; does a lunatic undulating between sanity and insanity, know that s/he’s a lunatic? How would they; isn’t it why we relate it to obsession. They’re right because they think they’re right and they think it very strongly and passionately; they aren’t hypocrites, they are believers and it’s only fair that they find it astounding why other’s are so plain, feeble, so dispassionate, tedious and wearisome.

“But supposing it should turn out in the end that such a love should lose its object, should it, whatever happened, lose its object? Some loves are not defeated by death, although it is not as easy as we think to love the dead. But there are pains and devices which defeat love more ingeniously. Would I at last absolutely lose Hartley because of a treachery or desertion on her part which should turn my love into hate? Could I begin to see her as cold, heartless, uncanny, a witch, a sorceress? I felt that this could never be, and I felt it as an achievement, almost as a mode of possession. As James said ‘If even a dog’s tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light.’ My love for Hartley was very nearly an end in itself. Twist and turn as she might, whatever happened she could not escape me now.”

“What indeed was I planning to do? I was in a state which I well knew was close to a sort of madness, and yet I was not mad. Some kinds of obsession, of which being in love is one, paralyse the ordinary free-wheeling of the mind, its natural open interested curious mode of being, which is sometimes persuasively defined as rationality. I was sane enough to know that I was in a state of total obsession and that I could only think, over and over again, certain agonizing thoughts, could only run continually along the same rat-paths of fantasy and intent.”

And entangled in this hullabaloo of affairs, deception and tragic deaths, the others play their parts, they enter and exit, they stay; the ambiance and tune changes – from a gloomy surrender to a maddening rage, from a calm melody to a tumultuous symphony. A silhouette of the spiritual and supernatural also flirts with the reader. Murdoch, like in her other stories presents a range of questions and none of them are really answered. You love and hate the characters, and more so because they manifest reality, their emotions are of this world. You’ll end up justifying the characters for their horrific, loving and/or indifferent acts; like a shrink you’ll try to understand them, you’ll want to make them understand. In the end, you’ll just end up making yourself understand.

How well a story resonates with you depends on when you pick it up and for me it couldn’t be a better time and situation. I felt, in bits and pieces living the emotions of most of the characters; of being obsessed, of hatred due to helplessness, of desire, of pangs of jealousy, of submissiveness, of dominance, of so called pragmatism and more importantly being immersed, deeply immersed in the sea of love.

In Hartley, I saw a resemblance of the female protagonist of J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’. I was also reminded of John Banville’s ‘The Sea’ when I went through these accounts. The sound of the sea relaxes, calms you down but somehow also has an agonizing effect, goading you to ponder, silencing you in your words but making your thoughts scream. Is that true for others as well?

Sooner or later, the sea throws back all that we put in it. The waves give back to Charles a longing and undesirable loneliness for all of his fastidious plans and rancor. Finally, he attempts to come to terms with it; he realizes that caring, love and desire cannot be in mere words, if it can’t be felt. There’s a very thick line between thinking, believing and doing.

LOVE indeed is a four letter word and yet it’s BEAUTIFUL (that’s nine!) and NECESSARY (nine again).

Can Lizzie’s (a former lover) words in a letter to Charles sum up to an attainment of peace in love?

“My love for you is quiet at last. I don’t want it to become a roaring furnace. If I could have suffered more I would have suffered more. Tenderness and absolute trust and communication and truth matter more and more as one grows older. Somehow let us not waste love, it is rare. Can we not love each other at last in freedom, without awful possessiveness and violence and fear? Love matters, not ‘in love’ Let there be no more partings now. Let there be peace between us now forever, we are no longer young. Love me Charles, love me enough.”

My rating – 9/10

Images courtesy:

Iris Murdoch picture - https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/iris-murdoch

Book cover - https://electricliterature.com/my-year-in-re-reading-after-40-5-the-sea-the-sea-by-iris-murdoch/