Eleven Minutes

 - By Paulo Coelho

“At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”

That is how the book kept me hooked. The blatant finality of the statement and the bold truth of it just had me gripping that book tighter, as I lost focus on the words in print and lost myself in a world of thought. Eleven minutes left me astounded. The choice of the theme for the novel and the protagonist’s profession to realize her dreams might be unconvincing (in fact it was unconvincing in the novel), the thoughts that were supposed to convey were aptly conveyed by the author. Paulo Coelho hit all the right chords as he spoke of love and triumph of it through the character Maria and her fairy tale with Ralf Hart, a painter who falls in love with her when he notices the special light she had about her.

The book speaks about the journey set about Maria from a girl of a small town to realize her dreams of earning money for supporting her family. At the age of eleven when she felt her heart throb for the first time and she loses an opportunity to speak to the kid she fancies, she realizes the importance of lost chances. A very subtle incident that shaped her in the long run. There are many cases where one loses the chance of a lifetime because one was afraid to take the chance or the risk required to fulfill that opportunity. Yet, every time upon reflection one regrets that act. Perhaps because opportunities are disguised in inconvenient packages and sometimes only after it is lost do we realize that it was an opportunity. And when Maria realizes that she lost an opportunity that would never return to her, she vows that she would never ever lose an opportunity, ever again.

As she enters adolescence and she became aware of her sensuality and as she endures the heartbreak of noticing her boy friend befriending her best friend who casts her pitiful glances, she realizes the pain of heartache. In the maturity one has at that age, she feels that guys bring pain, suffering and heartache and realizes that there never shall be a prince charming and that her fairy tale ending might not really materialize.

On her first earned break in Rio de Janeiro, she meets a night club owner from Brazil who offers her a chance of being a salsa dancer. The image of a flourishing city and the lust of reaching her dream flashes her eyes where she makes an impromptu decision of accepting an offer. “I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure.  It’s all a question of how I view my life.”

Though she did not understand the language, with the co-workers who snort at the innocent belief of her, she understands the reality of the situation. “… I would rather throw myself out of the plane as it crosses the ocean. Since I cannot open the windows, I would die here. But before I die, I want to fight for life. If I can walk on my own, I can go wherever I like.”  When she gets her head around the fact that she cannot go back home with shattered dreams, she sets on making herself better at what she does, but she still holds the dream of finding her knight in shining armor very dear. As days passed, she falls in love with an Arab guy and taking a chance against the rule of her work that relation with customers is prohibited, she gives in to her heart and takes a trip with the guy to spend sometime with him, which costs her – her job.

With what little money she had she sets herself up in a small room and decides to make her looks work for her and sets herself a modeling profile and runs around the agencies for a chance. After a long wait of three months, in which time she improves her French and her worldly knowledge through her regular visits to the library, she gets a call from an agency setting up a meeting with a prospective employee which she accepts. Upon reaching the hotel where the meeting was set up, the guy asks her to join him for a drink in the hotel room for a thousand Francs. That is when she realizes the intentions of the guy and as the despair reaches her mind, numbing her, she drops to tears.

“Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books.  A writer once said that it is not time that changes a man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.  What nonsense!  The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.  Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next.  But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair.  Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.” When she realizes that the life in front of her has not many options, she decides to accept his offer and thus her entry into the world of seduction.

On reaching her room after the ordeal which did not even bring her a satisfying elevation, she makes a decision of earning the money through this line of work and takes a walk to Rue de Burne where she enters a night club and approaches the owner requesting for work. She understands the simple system of how the guy approaches her, asking if she would be interested in a drink with him, where she has to order the fruit juice which was the costliest on the menu and accept his further invitation to take her out for three hundred and fifty Francs for forty five minutes, which every customer at the bar seems to know. As she continues with her life every single night, she tries to make her services better by making an effort to understand the needs of the guys she offers herself. She realizes that the men who come to the club are afraid and are ashamed of they cannot actually satisfy the women they lay themselves in. “Men are very strange: They can beat you up, shout at you, threaten you, and yet, they are scared to death of women really. Perhaps not the woman they married, but there's always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices. Even if it’s their own mother.” But she is befuddled with this realization. If any, she felt she should be the one who should be ashamed that she was unable to satisfy them for a night.

For a night? Now come on, you're exaggerating. It's really only 45 minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phoney gestures of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about Eleven Minutes. Eleven Minutes! The world revolved around something that only took Eleven Minutes.

And because of these eleven minutes in one twenty four hour day, they got married, supported their family, put up with screaming kids…. Something is very wrong with the civilization and it wasn’t the destruction of Amazon rain forest or the ozone layer… it was precisely the thing she was working on: sex.

And that is the title of the novel, the importance of the physical gratification in everyone’s life and the approach one has towards it. As the days pass, she sends postcards to her home from the places she visited. She decides that she would get out of this profession when she earns enough money to buy herself a small land and set up farming, away from the city humdrum. With that thought, she sets about understanding farming and writes to her dad about her idea of purchasing land.

On a day when she was off, she picks a couple of books on farming and takes a stroll down the upper part of a city where she notices a yellow plaque with the name “Road to Santiago”. The name stood out and she decided that she needs to know the meaning of the word. She enters that place and asks the girl at the bar for its meaning and she was disappointed that the girl could not answer. She decided she might as well take a break and asks for a cup of coffee noting that they are highly priced than the usual. As she sips the coffee and flips through the pages of the farming books, she could not hold her interest and closes the book, pays for her coffee and sets to go out, when she hears the words “Hang on a moment” from behind her. She turns to notice that a painter was talking to her. Not realizing what those words shall mean after today, she just stares at the person. The painter wishes to paint her and requests her to pose for his painting. Noticing her apprehension the girl at the bar ensures that the painter is renowned and asks her to wait. Maria accepts the offer and stares out of the window as the painter gets to work.

After the painting was done, he introduces himself as Ralf Hart mentioning that he saw her before. She snaps on him that she is a prostitute from head to toe, while he calmly retorts that what she did held little meaning to him and that there is a special light about her that made her different. As she sits dumbfounded by his declaration and as he speaks more about his life and his disinterest in intimacy, she decides that she has something to offer to this guy after all, for this chance meeting with him is holding a significant meeting for her and she was enjoying herself and feeling genuinely happy. So she invites him for a stroll. As they keep walking on a route traveled by thousands, she realized that this was the loveliest afternoons she spent in her stay there. As they ended up in a bar on the other side of the town, he said that he would meet her in her club as her client. The anxiousness in her is evident as she opens the door towards an unknown while he insists that he will see her, if only to save himself. She reflects on the lost opportunity at the age of eleven and decides to be silent, allowing him to interpret that silence. “If he was the man she wanted him to be, he would not be intimidated by her silence.” 

And thus begins her journey into a chance that fate brought upon her. She realizes, as the alarm bells ring in her heart, that the carefully constructed wall of self control was about to ebb away and that she is falling in love with the painter!

Ahhh… the rest of the book is simply superb. As she establishes herself a loyal clientele, the owner of her night club approaches her with an offer from a special client. She accepts the offer and when she walks with that special client into the hotel, she realizes she enters into an unknown world, where pain and pleasure go hand in hand, into the world of masochism and sadism. She, to her amazement realizes that she enjoys that pain.

When she meets Ralf Hart later on, though she covers herself well with additional accessories, he notices the marks left by the handcuffs and tells her to not enter into that world. While she glares at him saying that he had no idea what he was talking about, he surprises her by saying that he had his share of experience about the dark side and that it was not worth it. He invites her for a walk and as they reach the lake shore, he asks her to remove her shoes and coat. She was hesitant arguing that the stones would hurt her and that it was cold. He asks her to trust him, as he trusted her. As she begins her walk along the shore, bare foot alongside him, she finds that her feet were throbbing as the stones prick her skin and she is enduring a form of suffering. The pain heightens after a certain point where she merely puts one foot before the other, before she recedes herself into a moment of peace after reaching the limit of pain she could endure, collapsing into his hands.
“‘I felt that pain is a woman’s friend.’ 
‘That is the danger.’ 
‘I also felt that pain has it’s limits.’ 
‘That is the salvation.  Don’t forget that.’”

“You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced pain today and found peace. That’s why I’m telling you: don’t get used to it, because it’s very easy to become habituated; it’s a very powerful drug.  It’s in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams.  Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial.  Or cowardice.  However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives………………
Does the soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for the country. Does the wife want to show her husband how happy she is? No, she wants to show him how devoted she is, how she suffers to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? No, he is giving his sweat and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children. Pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love”

How does one endure a life time of suffering or pain, every day, basking it in a holy word called love, when love should have been a form of freedom, an ecstasy? Are we all seeking some form of pleasure in the pain we endure? Is sadism and masochism so much a part of our lives that the forbidden ecstasies are not really forbidden after all? The above passage of the novel had me grinding midnight oil as I realized, under the disguise of sacrifice or lies, one deceives oneself and that there is beauty in pain. And just as pain has a threshold, after enduring a certain amount of pain, what would happen next? The physical exercise exhausted her as she collapsed, but perhaps, the agony one puts oneself through the irrelevant sacrifices one makes in life gives one a heart attack! But the sheer thoughtlessness of the after cause of the suffering one puts oneself and the people they love, is it worth the time?

And that evening, Maria writes in her diary for the first time, that she detests what she is doing with her life. “Life is too short or too long for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly!”

Ralf has saved her from a world of pain and she realizes that she fell in love with the person. She has never been able to consummate herself to a guy, despite her profession, she only fakes her satisfaction to not make her clientele ashamed of themselves, but on that day, when she realizes that she actually loves Ralf, right in the middle of the road, she attains a physical gratification just by thinking about him touching her.

The way the novel speaks of the love that passed between Maria and Ralf is simply superb. The little unconventional things they do together, like sitting in front of fire and just staring at each other, as the shadows of time drool over them and the beads of perspiration burst on their skin, a moment more intimate than the physical contact passes between them which had nothing to do with sex. As they explore each other, simply by touching each other, through their eyes – the passion that passes through them is simply superb.

“Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they’re not.  When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing.  They can stay together for hours, even days.  They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or–such is the pleasure they experience–they may never finish it.  No eleven minutes for them.”

Such high passion requires an ethereal experience and I was in awe with the way Paulo wrote about it. Maria, after she reaches the target date, decides that it was the right moment to stop what she was doing and informs the same to the night club owner. She takes every penny she owns and packs her bags and walks out. On her way, however she decides to stop at Ralf’s place. The shared moments of intimacy, where Ralf not only owns her body but also mind is awesome. Where Maria not just satisfies the guy but is satisfied in turn as she embraces the beauty of sex for the first time with a guy, where Ralf not only shows her the beauty in loving but also the beauty in understanding a female body, where the passion heightens to leave them both in a state of dance that is sensual, is mind blowing.

“In all the languages in the world, there is the same proverb: ‘What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’  Well, I say that there isn’t an ounce of truth in it.  The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget.  If we’re in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots.  If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.”
The next morning however, she walks out of the door, without looking back.

As she reaches Paris, she hears a quiet voice behind her “We still have Paris” and she turns to find Ralf Hart behind her, holding a bunch of roses…

“…. And to be utterly sure that this was what you wanted, that you were expecting me that all the determination and will power in the world would not be enough to prevent the love from changing the riles of the game from one moment to the next. It’s really easy being as romantic as the people in the movies, don’t you think?”

And thus the journey of a girl who turns prostitute, yet holds her dream of prince charming dear, gets her fairy tale and that is fruition of Ralf Hart’s search for himself.

A fantastic book, that left me astounded at the amount of thoughts it stirred in me. If I did not interlace those thoughts with the excerpts from the book, I would take another ten posts to just speak about the topics covered by this book. Worth every second spent on it. And this will remain as one of the most precious books I laid my hands on...

The Wednesday Letters

- By Jason F.Wright

Everything is not as one perceives nor is everything just plain. There is a web of intricacy woven into the lives of people we so well know that the depths of emotions cannot be interpreted succinctly. This novel is about the lives of Cooper’s family and the secrets that surface posthumously, turning the world upside down if only for a second. The novel conveys a simple message in a straight forward way and manages to touch the heart, leaving an impression.

Jack and Laurel Cooper are happily married and live a quiet life in their own B&B. One fateful night, they begin their journey into the other world. Their three children arrive for the funeral and this includes their youngest, Malcolm, who is a fugitive from law, who must face an impending arrest warrant as well as his love, whom he could not erase from his heart despite her being engaged to marry another man. As they go through the belongings of their parents, they find the letters written by Jack to Laurel. Jack, secretly vows (one of his marital vows ;), any guys out there willing to take this challenge :D ???) to write a letter to his wife every Wednesday and true to his word, every single Wednesday he wrote a letter. As they read them, they get to know the lives of their parents and the tremendous amount of commitment both held to work this relation for thirty nine years through to a journey to the other world.

No tragic sagas, yet a story that touches everyone. No twisted plot, just subtle love story, with core values of love, forgiveness, healing and faith. This is for everyone who has ever been in love or has been hurt.

Hopefully, this novel will motivate me to revive the lost habit of penning down letters to friends, near and far!

A Bridge across forever

- By Richard Bach

I have to say, Richard Bach is a poet who writes in prose! Whether the concept of soul mates exists or not, is not something of a debate for me, for even after reading such a splendid book, I dare to believe that it can only be possible in fairy tales. Somewhere someone might or might not be there, but the values projected in this book, though bordering to be tad bit philosophical, challenges one to really look into the core and bring that inner voice out and see where it takes you. The novel left me in want of more though. I cannot help but feel that the ending of it was too abrupt or perhaps, that is just me!

As the story unravels, I felt that it was Richard Bach in the evolving, through the help of Leslie Parrish. What started as a friendship, through the lengthy chess games, and interesting conversations and the yearning to spend quality time with each other, slowly evolves into something much more than kinship. Though Richard envisages his soul mate as someone who is a mirage of him, slowly realizes that Leslie Parrish is a wonderful person, the sort of person for whom he waited his entire life for. But, Richard Bach, has his share of problems in lowering his defenses and surrendering his ideologies and letting the relation grow into something more substantial than just friendship. And the book depicts the struggle of Bach to overcome his selfishness and to give himself to this wonderful person. Leslie Parish comes out as an infallible person, who slowly nurtures Richard into choosing the path that is enormously difficult to him, the path called commitment. And of course, after that, it is about the journey the two together embark upon, pushing past the known limits.

The letter she wrote to Richard, when like all men, he too wasn’t ready for the long term commitment, was simply fabulous. Here is an excerpt from that letter:

“We have both had a vision of something wonderful that awaits us. Yet we cannot get there from here. I am faced with a solid wall of defenses and you have the need to build more and still more. I long for the richness and fullness of further development, and you will search for ways to avoid it as long as we're together. Both of us are frustrated; you unable to go back, I unable to go forward, in a constant state of struggle, with clouds and dark shadows over the limited time you allow us.
To feel your constant resistance to me, to the growth of this something wonderful, as if I and it were something horrible—to experience the various forms the resistance takes, some of them cruel—often causes me pain on one level or another.”
“Away and apart or together and apart, it is too unhappy. I am watching me become a creature who cries a lot, a creature who even must cry a lot, for it almost seems that pity is necessary before kindness is possible. And I know I have not come this far in life to become pitiful.”
“Richard, my precious friend, this is said softly, even ten¬derly and lovingly. And the soft tones do not camouflage an underlying anger: they are real. There are no accusa¬tions, no blames or faults. I am simply trying to under¬stand, and to stop the pain. I am stating what I have been forced to accept; that you and I are never going to have a development, much less the glorious climactic expression of a relationship grown to full blossom.
I have felt if anything in my life deserved departure from previously established patterns, going beyond all known limitations, this relationship did. I suppose I might be justified in feeling humiliated about the lengths to which I have gone to make it work. Instead, I feel proud of my¬self and glad to know I recognized the rare and lovely opportunity we had while we had it, and gave all I could, in the purest and highest sense, to preserve it.”

Those are few sentences I loved in that letter.

Any relation requires compromise, but to compromise to the level where the very essence of you is lost, is unnecessary hindrance to one’s growth. No relation, however special it is, requires one to buckle over the knees. And the discussion that follows this letter shows that Richard has acknowledged the special person she is and is willing to give this relation a try. And the book evolves to show how they stay together through the tough times and learn to grow on each other, how they build intimacy and finally about how they bring in a sense of completeness. The novel brings in a ray of hope to everyone who reads it. It gives wings to those hidden thoughts, the thoughts buried deep inside chester drawers, whose keys are lost in the moment’s fury; those thoughts that are buried deep within, on those sleepless nights with a promise to never put oneself through the humiliation of unrealistic dreams of true love! And Richard Bach does weave magic with the words and it is all the more special, because, for once, it is not a knight in shining armour rescuing a princess, but a princess saving the life of a struggling knight.

Though it is ironic that the couple are no longer married or lawfully wedded, it just makes the biography all the more real and not a fairy tale. Love, surpasses many boundaries and a wedlock is just a gesture to stake a claim, perhaps!!! But, what is more important is that they experienced love and they experienced the joy of living together and growing on each others strength. Isn’t that what love is all about? To help outgrow one’s own self, through the inspiration of your partner? Richard and Leslie Parrish, show the same, in their journey across that bridge, with a promise that they would grow together.

"We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and love!"

The book is worth the time and the effort :)

Wuthering Heights

- By Emily Bronte

Reading classics is like falling back into time, into a world so different from now and seeing the perceptions that once existed and wondering if there is any difference now. Every single time I opened a classic, after what felt like eons of current writings, I always took time to get into the rhythm of the novel, to get the flavor of the sarcasm and wit and to get into the story. And this time, I read Wuthering heights. I remember reading this almost eight years ago and though the story remained with me, I did not enjoy the style or the story, neither did I appreciate the challenge it must have been, to Emily Bronte, to put that thought onto the paper, nor did I appreciate the complexities of the characters in the novel. But now, for some reason, this book, left a staggering amount of mixed feelings.

Any novel, once it falls into a genre, which in this case is romance, comes with a preconceived notion that the book goes about portraying the bonding and the sizzle of the relation. But, this is a romance novel, with no clichéd romanticisms. It is dispassionate with brilliant interventions of self realization and love. Love, in the conventional sort of romance, should be passionate, driving the lovers into strong emotions of tenderness and despair, evolving into a choking, gooey sentiment that demands compassion for the lovers, from any observer. This romance, is unconventional, in that it does not demand compassion. It almost clinically demolishes the little sympathy that might be evoked on the characters. But still, the under current tone of obsession, (yes, love is an obsession), that always seems to border below the main story line of revenge and hate, touches the reader. It is not a luke warm feeling, it is a thin blanket in the snow – insufficient, yet required. The book made me detest the characters for their self-obsessed nature, their cunning and self-inflicted misery. The hate that forms the tone of emotion, for the major part of the novel, left me slightly dizzy, in terms of the heartlessness and the cruelty of the characters, yet, the clichéd romanticisms did come in the form confessions of their true feelings. The author, should be appreciated for the most natural characterization of the human emotions.

To dissect the characters and their relations is like trying to figure out the starting and ending of a cobweb. Each can be a case study of its own. I am not attempting at that. At this point, I am not sure what I would end up writing in here, I jus thave to free some space in my mind else an OutOfMemoryError is right on its way and a forced shut down is inevitable!

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

Despite the deepest emotion Catherine Earnshaw feels towards Heathcliff, the barriers of social class and her own selfish reason to assist Heathcliff to a better social life, away from her brother, who takes pleasure in tormenting and torturing Heathcliff, make her choose Edgar Linton over Heathcliff, there by pushing the world of Heathcliff into hatred and revenge. The martyred reason demolishes her world into insanity, depression and misery, yet this self infliction did not evoke any sympathy towards her. If any, she became a monster who willfully destroyed the one thing that could perhaps have been precious. There were a lot of “what ifs” in this novel for me, but be that as it may, I can only hope that had things been different and had Heathcliff been slightly more virtuous in his approach to life, perhaps, he could have stirred a more softer tone of emotions in me.

Heathcliff, who comes out as a protagonist of the novel does not hold the sympathy of the reader, despite having few brilliant passages that almost pass for passion. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most challenging characterizations I ever read. After hearing that Catherine chose Edgar Linton, he leaves the place only to return after three years, when Catherine welcomes him with unbridled enthusiasm, though her husband is not keen in entertaining the company. However, the visits of Heathcliff become more prominent, to the dismay of Edgar Linton. The consequence of which stirs his sister Isabella’s heart, which portrays Heathcliff to be her prince charming. One such visit forces a confrontation between Heathcliff and Catherine who wishes that he leave Isabella in peace. As the words fly, Nelly, the maid in the house telltales this to Linton. Linton in a fit of fury enters the confrontation of Catherine and Heathcliff and orders Heathcliff off his grounds and to never set foot on his property, ever again. This stirs a rage in Catherine that makes her lock herself in a room and eventually fall sick at the mirthless thoughts that surround her. Her health deteriorates over the period of time and on one occasion when Heathcliff visits her, in the absence of her husband, comes a brilliant exchange that left me choking.

"Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt."



"Why did you betray your own heart Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. ... You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? Because ... nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of you own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave? I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?"

Catherine never recovers from her illness and dies after giving birth to a girl child.

"Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

Such fierce feelings!!!

Heathcliff teases to be a romantic hero, with his suffering and pain, yet his characterization leaves no doubt that hate is an emotion that shall change the heart to ice, unforgiving and relentless in pursuit of the destruction of the lives, who destroyed his. It is almost sad, to see such strong emotions suppressed in the necessity of his revenge.

Each character in the novel, had their moments of brilliance in their diction, but Heathcliff left me teasing till the very end – one side being so human that my heart went out for him and on the other side, driven by the revenge, his behavior towards the second generation – Catherine’s daughter, his son, his niece was despicable that it made me cringe with the deepest detest. It is like, he is incapable of loving anything purely, apart from that of Catherine. He might be the devil himself, yet the love that he continued to have for her cut through me, continuously. There might have been some remorse in the end, just little, perhaps, to sympathize him, but none, not one morsel of it.

The second generation of Earnshaw, Linton and Heathcliff also forms the major part of the story, with the senior Heathcliff playing havoc on all their lives, significantly influencing each in directions that are not heart warming, but certainly in a way a human determined on revenge would behave. Nothing can support the monstrosity of the actions, yet in some strange way, there is some satisfaction in his suffering too:
"That however which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least – for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"

This book took me completely in and left me seething from the inside. It painfully twisted my gut, at every page turn, until I could hold no more, when I forcefully shut the book. What goes around, comes around, but what fault is it of Hareton Earnshaw (son of Hindley Earnshaw), to endure the torment that was unleashed on him? To deliberately scorn an intelligent mind and parade over the charisma of the person, the act itself is filled with such malice that it left me aghast, to say the least. Perhaps it is true that we reap the benefits of everything our parents sow, good or bad! And whose fault is it, that Linton Heathcliff (son of Isabella and Heathcliff) should suffer the torment of his biological father after Isabella’s death.

"He had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, 'Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!" That alone promised more torture, the kind that he felt when he entered the castle of Wuthering Heights as an orphan.

I really could not categorize Heathcliff, throughout the novel. If a person could hold a passion, how can he hold such contempt? I think, it has got to do with something about the cause of the rift between Catherine and Heathcliff. That Hindley Earnshaw’s treatment of him as that of a servant than a family member, which drove Catherine to choose Edgar Linton as her husband, put a notion in his head that Hindley was responsible for the separation. And in marrying Catherine, Edgar also rubbed on the wrong side of the coin. Of course, his love for Catherine is eternal, but that does not mean he held any sympathy for her. The convoluted workings of his mind demanded that he be damned so much that at the end of the novel, when he progressed enough to endure the peace in his heart, it made me feel pity.

Gosh, this is gonna stay with me for some time. A deliberate attempt at remembering the convoluted minds. But then, such is the style of writing, that, despite the bravado at attempting to ward off any thoughts on this novel, I seem to go back to it, reading the passages over and over and over, sinking in the words and the motives and the intent. Even in the middle of the night, this torments me to no end. I keep playing this in my mind, questioning the rationale, thinking how it would have been, had the choice been different. Would Catherine sustain her love for Heathcliff, with the family disowning her? Would Heathcliff be strong enough to steady her ship? Somehow, throughout the novel, all the characters were in the back ground. The foreground has always been Heathcliff and his love or hate. Everyone else diminished in comparison. I am still inside this book, unable to form coherent thoughts to jot down.

What can I say, except that if someone makes an attempt at opening this book, it would be hard to put down. Especially if one loves the play of words. The plot, the genre, the setting, the rendition – all are one side, the prose is entirely on the other side, that demands that this be read and re-read and re-read.

I am still not at peace!