Skip to main content

Eleven minutes!



This post would take your precious eleven minutes to read, stay rooted please!

Yes, this is one of Coelho's leading novels which has redefined set definitions of sexuality. I can't do justice to neither Coelho nor his revolutionary approach to life and this definitely is not a book review. This post is about what the book did to me as a reader.

I had this dull life as I was growing up amidst the traditional air of a Brahmin family. I was never encouraged to challenge or to be rude to people who were mean to me. My mother had this belief, "the world may forget humanity but you must never cease being humane".  I kept those words with me as I grew. I had to be humane to be a human, I kept on telling myself. I never challenged myself enough until I left home for higher studies. I was thrown into a new world of deceit, shallowness where what was good never stayed good and what seemed bad seemed true later. I developed a new idea with time, that life wasn't utterly to be compartmentalised into two shades: BLACK, WHITE. There was a shade of grey and that was what life demanded of us, to acknowledge it.

Yet, I was stuck to the periphery when it came to establishing emotional connect with people. Anyone who walked into my life found a great friend in me for I was ready to see their grey shade. If I loved them once as a friend, I could never hate them. That was one thing from the rule book of my life. But people couldn't actually see that I had a grey shade as well. It was never about me but them. There were times when I felt lonely, there were enough occasions of discomfort but I was contented. I had this small little world where everything was enough for me to be happy. I didn't want anything more from life. I was happy or so I would like to believe I was until things happened.

 I believe people walk into our life for a reason. They see the light in us which the rest of the world fails to see. Just like Maria, from the novel, my light got discovered one fine day when I was least expecting it to happen. My soul got stirred for I had been discovered. I was reluctant to let that person see my vulnerability but as time sew memories I got to feel that we two rose from the same dust. I knew I trusted him and for the very first time I was ready to move mountains to be with him. I felt I knew him from ages and when all of this was happening, I was being drawn from the periphery to the centre and that's where I never knew to be. I started panicking, I lost my composure. Things were beginning to change and just like Maria from the novel, mine was a different adventure.

In the novel, Maria falls in love when she least expects to find someone worth falling for. I guess that is how things happen. That is how love should happen. When you find someone who can stirr your soul and help you find uncharted lands within your soul that's what love is. Love necessarily isn't about finding someone nice, it's about being found out when you are least prepared. It should shook you to your core enough to question everything that you thought you knew about yourself.

One thing from the novel which would stay with me is the idea of reaching into each other's soul without necessarily being tangled into bodily pleasures. Maria gifts the person she falls in love with, a pen which is dear to her for that is what helps her to store her secrets, her misadventures, her regrets and pain in her diary, she in return gets gifted with a carriage from a toy train set which reminds her lover of his lonely childhood. This idea of gifting, helps to establish a emotional connect between their souls. They gift each other a part of their memory which when released makes it easier for them.


I have had many things to lose in my life and right now I am sailing in a sea of loses but this novel has taught me to keep believing in dreams. It has taught me a new way to look at life. My personal tragedies would definitely gift me life changing memories. I may have nothing to hold on to but I have everything to help me believe in the idea of love. Maria knows that things need to end to keep on being beautiful. That definitely holds meaning!


Thank you for sparing your eleven minutes!! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life on wheels

The one thing that I always had dreamt of as a kid was to have a caravan that could take me to places.I always wanted a gypsy styled life. The idea itself mesmerized me to the extent that I kept dreaming of it the whole time not even realising how it was time which kept on rolling but I stood exactly at the same place, my dreams could never concretize. What was laughed at as a childish game was so important to me that I keep doodling it in my memory till now. I see a meadow, lush green with those small daffodils growing by, perhaps Wordsworth's daffodils! Then I see a girl, her wild unkept hair sailing in the gentle breeze. She has a smile which speaks of solitude, and her heart , well that's swelling with happiness as he looks at her caravan, after all she finally has a life on wheels. What more could she wish for, what more  can anyone wish for? It's not always that we get to live a life we conceived as a kid, life keeps on deciding our track. From what we liked doing
2 comments
Read more

Grandpa and me

I am the eldest grandchild in my family. And being the eldest, I was pampered a great deal by my grandparents. My aama (grandma) and baa (grandpa) always shielded me from every possible dangers including thrashings from maa. I have pleasant memories of evening story sessions as grandpa took me to bed. Aama would oil my hair and tie pony tails which resembled coconut trees that I used to draw. Sundays meant elaborate sessions with my grandparents. Baa would trim my nails, aama would fondle me to sleep. Their bed room was literally my playing room, my story book reading room, my painting room and what not. With time, as I grew, I got a room of my own but their room was still my favourite one. When I left for hostel, I missed them more than I missed my parents.  It was in the year 2014, I had come home after my exams when aama received a pressure stroke . She couldn't make it. I had spent a month as he lay sick on her bed. All of a sudden, there was a role reversal. I could
2 comments
Read more

"My love is enough for both of us"

"My love is enough for both of us", she often felt those words ring in her heart. She finally had understood that life wouldn't always follow her designs. That people are meant to leave but their memories won't. She often had wondered how someone could love her to such an extent when that person had always known that she wouldn't reciprocate those feelings. How could a person stand by her when she always acted as a fleeting shadow. She never had given hope for she knew the pain of dejection but he kept hoping like a hopeless vagabond. How she wished that he would some day hate her enough to let go. She devised ways to free him from this web, she acted cold, turned indifferent, did everything he detested and she finally saw some changes. It was a relief, he finally seemed to take hold of his life. She could see him grow responsible. He finally it seemed was learning to love himself. Phone calls died, meetings subsided, they become known strangers. All this while
2 comments
Read more