Reflections: The Last Letter from Your Lover

After a serious accident that leaves her amnesic,  Jennifer Stirling returns to an unfamiliar place that everybody calls “her home”, to a strange man that everyone calls “her husband”. As she pieces together her past life and identity, she comes across a passionate love letter that is addressed to her. Only hitch is - the author is clearly not her husband. With the letter as her guide, she is determined to reclaim fragments of her old life that promised happiness and love. Her struggle is presented through the lens of the austere Victorian morals that still gripped London in the 1960s. How does one assess and put into perspective personal freedom against moral responsibility? The book addresses some of these questions through Jennifer’s epic love story.

I had high expectations for this book. I read a couple of glowing reviews for it that made it seem like the book was profound in its discussion of heavier themes on morality. And as predictable as it can get, I was drawn to it like a moth to light. Well, the book attempts to be more than a sappy love story, but it didn’t hit all the points for me. It is very much reminiscent of Anna Karenina in its portrayal of infidelity. The plot seems to have a formulaic approach. Most of its structure is borrowed from popular culture, literature and movies, so everything about the story is trite and predictable. In addition, it leaps and shuffles across time periods without conveying anything much or adding any dimension to the narration. And, I found the book to be far too long for the content it holds.

But there are certain interesting aspects. The author explores infidelity from multiple perspectives - the cheating husband, the cheated-on wife, the cheating wife, the cheated-on husband, and of course the unattached lover. Is it ever justifiable to have an affair? What about children? How important is one’s own personal freedom and happiness when it threatens to affect the happiness of others? Does morality and moral responsibility take different shades with the passage of time and evolution of society’s values? Heavy questions. But only a small portion of the book addresses the questions. For the most part, the story makes the questions seem black and white because it is narrowly presented through the specific contexts of the characters. The author tries to convince the reader that what A does is clearly wrong and what B is doing is clearly acceptable. One is bad and the other is good. The good is eventually favored in a grand twist of (too many) turns, and the bad gets burned. This approach was simplistic to me, and the themes fell apart as the rest of the book took the predictable journey that all romance novels take. Life is full of grey areas, not always happy endings, and serendipitous coming together of ideal circumstances. Although I’m not a hardened cynic that scoffs at happy endings, I do scoff at the heavily contrived ones. Many parts of the story didn't resonate with how reality works. It is just a feel-good, light read.

The book tries hard to make Jennifer’s story epic, but it did not touch me. I could definitely sympathize with some of the characters and I could surely understand Jennifer and her motivations, but the book didn’t leave a positive impression on me. 

 

Unheard Melodies

The past weekend, we watched the movie The Bridges of Madison County. For the very first time.

Yeah, I do have the distinct feeling of having spent the majority of my life under a rock. And as expected, the husband censured and lamented over Francesca’s “shocking” promiscuity and resignedly resorted to playing Angry Birds. I also surprised him by not entering into my usual "righteous" discussions on morality. Instead, I was weeping.

I wept for many reasons, but none of them has anything to do with the film resembling my life in any way. A cautious disclaimer ;). For seeing my tears, the husband was rattled and was rethinking his decision to leave me all by myself during his upcoming official trip. So, yeah, I cry because the world’s sorrow is my collective sorrow and all that.

I wept in appreciation of Meryl Streep’s performance - tears of awe and respect. Next, I wept that I was grown up enough to understand infidelity; to not judge or scorn it. I shocked myself by even empathizing. Anna Karenina did that to me. And now, this movie. Finally, I wept because the notion of romantic love is indeed fickle. The only sure way of preserving the fire of passion is to leave it stranded, and unattainable. Just the memory of not being able to attain it, elevates the romanticism and sustains the longing. As Keats said, “Heard Melodies Are Sweet, but Those Unheard Are Sweeter”.

As much as I long for peace and harmony, I see that our lives are indeed more interesting and fully lived when the horizon is always colored by some challenge, or smudged with some imminent uncertainty. Life in general, becomes more worth living because we then cling to a “purpose”- an idealistic one. We try to savor the best of what the present offers, focus on bigger elements, realize with clarity the most fundamental things that truly matter, and those million and one extraneous things which were previously picked on, but that don’t count in the harsh light of impermanence.

That said, I still strive for Happily-Ever-Afters. The more the challenge, the more tenuous the certainty, the more the idealism.

Reflections: The Piano Teacher

This is yet another book set during World War II. I guess I’m in one of those phases where I consciously (and subconsciously) keep stumbling on books and movies of a certain theme. I see myself almost at the tip of the saturation point, so hopefully I’ll soon move out of this theme soon.

Claire is a classic English woman - stiff and prejudiced. She is insecure and timid, not really knowing what she wants in life. She just seems to know that she wants to get out of her old, impoverished home and her critical mother. So she marries Martin and enters Hong Kong in the early 1950s. She soon finds employment as a Piano teacher to the wealthy and Westernized Chens. When she finds herself wetting her toes in Hong Kong’s elite social-circles, she abruptly plunges into an affair with an English man who is hardened and scarred by the war. The story moves around this mysterious English man’s past during the war, and the conspiracy around the Chinese Crown Collection which the Japanese were trying to pry from the English, while the English had themselves “legally” appropriated it from the Chinese.

As I have confessed before, I have been a pathetically poor student of History. Since this book was my first introduction to the political intrigue surrounding the Crown Collection, it was informative on that regard. It was also refreshing to get an account of the Western immigrants’ (particularly the status of English and Americans) prisoner-of-war conditions and struggles in Hong Kong when Japan raided the place. Regardless of which countries were fighting against which, and which ones called themselves “super-powers”, civilians across the world have suffered terribly. Particularly, immigrants stuck in other countries were in a harrowing limbo. These parts of the book were well researched and served as a good history “lesson”.

Lee also depicts the multicultural and highly westernized aspects of Hong Kong, even back in the 50s. Claire’s ignorant notion that none of the Chinese in Hong Kong knew English, and her surprise upon meeting many who spoke fluent and good English, reminded me of the constant “compliments” Indians receive in the U.S - “Why, your English is quite good!”. While many of my friends find this patronizing and infuriating, I don’t read too much into it. But reading Claire’s thoughts, as a prim and astonished English woman who couldn’t comprehend how people in other countries could speak her language as well as she could (or even better), irritated me. Through such succinct and sharp descriptions, Lee conveys entire paragraphs worth of History, ignorance and social notions. I admire Lee’s brevity in portraying such clear and vivid episodes which highlight the effects of war and the changes in the social and personal mentality of the diverse people that made up Hong Kong.

However, her brevity and subtlety come at a high cost. It makes her characters flat and boring, and her narration extremely choppy and vague. I was reminded of Mani Ratnam’s style of direction where actors abruptly say a few vague (but usually powerful) words for dialogue and leave it at that. This style does work in the visual medium, but it utterly fails in prose. This is my biggest problem with the book. I understand the the beauty behind subtlety, but when executed improperly, clarity suffers. Also, Lee's writing doesn’t define the characters, so I was unsympathetic to most characters, particularly Claire. I would argue that Claire is most certainly not the protagonist of this story, and her role can be likened to that of the flashy, substance-less heroines who star against Rajni Kanth. I found the round-about justification of her part to the “conspiracy” exceedingly silly and senseless.

Digested Thoughts: Although I was tempted to rule this book off saying I didn’t like it, I decided on a “kindlier” rating, because the History in this book was informative (yes, I can hear you say that you can find better books in the “History” section of a good library). The story suffered because of Lee’s writing style, but she did nicely bring out the moral/ethical dilemmas that surface and affect people during tragic circumstances  when one’s survival is at stake. In addition, I appreciated her portrayal of Hong Kong and its elites during the war and post-war time period. 

Reflections: The Scarlet Letter

Hester Pryne is accused of infidelity, which was considered an egregious sin among puritans who lived in New England in the late 19th century. Hester’s sin is just short of murder, or selling one’s soul to the evil and turning into a witch. She is sentenced to prison for a short-time, where she gives birth to her daughter - the baby crowns the glaring symbol of her misstep. The town and the chief priest decide to painfully reinforce the consequences of her sin to the public, to teach a lesson on morality. She is made to take a public stand with her baby and is condemned to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her chest for the rest of her life, to bear a constant symbol of reminder of her shame, her sin and her punishment. Despite her humiliation and cruel social-isolation and repugnance, Hester doesn’t reveal the name of the man who sinned with her, nor do the people of the town know who her husband is. As Hester bravely lives her life, trying to put away her sorrow and hurt, the men torment themselves - the husband hungry for revenge and the lover suffering with guilt. Hawthorne’s story discusses the prejudiced definition of “sin”, the different depths of morality, and the power of human conscience, while sensitively bringing out one woman’s resilience and agony.

This story and its themes are quite Crime and Punishment-esque, especially in the context of the slow and torturous ways in which the lover gets haunted and plagued with guilt. By following the lives of the condemned and the aggrieved, books such as these, offer a detailed and honest discussion of whether the original act can really be called a sin. And if the act were really a mistake, is the punishment justified in its severity? Is one single act enough to nullify all the other thousands of virtuous deeds and a righteous life led? In cases of infidelity, the lines are not quite clear as to who the victim and sinner are, and it was especially true in a cloistered era when individual feelings were brushed aside to doggedly conform to standards of societal-acceptance. All of these questions coalesce to get to the roots of the definition of morality itself.

Such stories also bring to light the dangers of a blind-folded view towards morality, right and wrong. Devoid of empathy, understanding and a basic touch of humanity, any framework of religion or morality is meaningless to the humankind. They don’t achieve their purpose of reformation - they only deepen the scars and extinguish the human spirit. Open-mindedness, rational thought and humane feelings need to be used as combined tools to assess a situation and think about reformation. In most cases, the “sinner” is usually the one with an unsoiled spirit and mind, and it’s the other officious judges of sins who lack integrity and purity of spirit.
Such books discuss my favorite themes on morality and I find that my views remain the same no matter how many different authors explore the topic. This book definitely deserves its stature as a literary classic.

Reflections: Anna Karenina

As a gift from my father, Anna Karenina has been longingly sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, with Anna's piercing portrait throwing accusing and pleading glances at me to pick her up and read her story. I attribute my delayed reading to the only deterrent - the monstrous size of the book, threatening to seriously injure my wrists if I were to so much as lift it nonchalantly. But, as part of my resolutions, I slogged like a diligent student burning the midnight oil in preparation for a serious exam, and now I bear the same sweet exhaustion that one has after accomplishing a strenuous feat. This is in no way to imply that my read was tedious. It was pleasantly intense - heavy with emotions, saturated with thoughts.

It's hard to assimilate my thoughts on a book of such high ranks. It's a book not just on the life of Anna, but represents a chunk of time that reflects life in late 19th century Russia. Tolstoy, as was Dostoevsky, was not merely an author to have created this masterpiece in literature. His astute perspicacity in so many fields - philosophy, psychology, sociology, and religion, is the reason why his name and this book still reside in esteemed hallmarks.

Tolstoy probes into the fundamental facets that plague our existence - love, marriage, children, infidelity, hypocrisy, societal duty, religion, spirituality, morality, philosophy, existentialism, birth and death. With a book so exhaustive, I;m trying to comb for meaningful words in a tangle of thoughts. Anna's story is legendary. A bewitchingly charming lady, she is a mother of a young boy, and a devout, albeit forlorn wife of a stately diplomat. To many, the term "loveless marriage" produces the sensation of grating nails on a wall. At large, a conservative society cannot fathom or produce an iota of empathy or sympathy for such a situation. But Tolstoy's words drive home the meaning of being unhappy, cold and isolated in a societal charade called marriage. When she unexpectedly gets caught in the talons of passionate love, Anna's soul awakens anew and longs to live its life. She heedlessly follows her heart and her passions, and leaves behind a bitter and fiery trail of misery and torment. Anna's act doubtlessly surfaces as a thoughtless debasement of her crude passions, but when we journey into her deepest inner turmoil, the hardest of hearts will find a trace of sympathy for her.

So far, I have been able to clearly demarcate infidelity as something to be censured. But for the first time, my feelings and thoughts fluctuated between reproach, sympathy, censure and pity for Anna. Despite Tolstoy's subtle exposition that being a slave to our passions is bound to lead one to a fractured and peace-less state, his portrayal of Anna, of the characters and her life, cannot be more objective and immersed in reality. He never thrusts an overpowering message of right or wrong. He brings out the black and white in each of us, the true dilemmas, and the true demons that haunt us. When society ostracizes Anna, he fires anger at our constrained and tightly bound rules, when Anna's son is abandoned and is traumatized, he brings in admonition tainted with helpless pity towards Anna, and when Anna spirals down with her inane and irrational emotions when her life with her lover gets arduous, he creates plentiful abhorrence towards the very lady whose plight the reader would have amply sympathized with in the previous page. Only an adroit writer can achieve such realistic evocations. Anna stands pitiful and helpless, despite her foibles, which try as we might, cannot be subject to harsh judgment.

With Anna's story forming the heart of the novel, Tolstoy culls out the meaning of marriage and the ironical way in which our society is framed with hypocritical importance paid to the legalized branding of a husband and a wife. Anna's life with her lover is cast in comparison with her former married life with her husband, and the fake life of another woman, who is legally bound to her husband, despite his salacious activities. The age old question - is it much worthier to please the unknown eyes of the society, by remaining in a sham called marriage, wherein both people have drifted apart, retain no love or companionship for each other, but stick together for the sake of children and security in society? How is a non-legalized relationship that epitomizes the true spirit of matrimony, immoral? Anna's marriage was arranged by her family. So should the perils of one such a mistake be undergone all through one's life? Many are bound to see Anna's emotions as immature and profane, but I truthfully don't know how to evaluate such a situation. In my simpleton view, when children are involved, one has to consider them as important factors in the equation. There is no excuse to evade such a responsibility. My view of morality encompasses only the sphere of children, nothing more. Society and religion dissolve for me. Yet I can't rebuke Anna, for the reason for her tragedy and incessant torture was because of her guilt and pangs for her son. It's like watching a car that accidentally veered into a slippery turn, slide down hill with very little control to revoke that single impulse of a mistake. Precisely the reason why I feel it's unfair that the rules in our society have to be so unrealistically and mercilessly tight, that they fail to embody any realm of forgiveness, empathy or compassion.

In the heat of such traumatic revelations, Tolstoy deftly shows how the strength garnered from religion and spirituality can guide a man into noble and virtuous directions. He shows how forgiveness can envelope the soul with the much needed peace and clarity, and how hatred and harbored negativity lacerates our presonality, awakening an embittered, cruel side of us. As much as he emphasizes the glory of spiritual strength, he also takes an unbiased view of how religion, when applied without thought or meaning can be used as a double-edged sword to bring out the worst in a person. A staunchly religious person who merely conforms to the external decorum of rules and society and doesn't look into the integrity and purity of his thoughts and actions, is probably much more of a sinner. Through an array of characters in this novel, Tolstoy analyzes the thought process of a spiritual and religious skeptic. Agnostics teem aplenty amongst us, keen on using reason and science to deduce the meaning of life and everything around us. But Tolstoy shows how even a skeptic is rooted with an inherent need to grasp onto some form of higher faith when he confronts the many uncontrollable forces of our lives. The meaning of life is shown to be something imbibed deep within each of us, which cannot be attempted to be explained with reason, and articulated with words. We are all aware of a deep need to live true to our inner souls, and to work in the way of goodness; probably these are the only real purposes of our existence. To live, learn and follow our ingrained intuition of doing good. Perhaps it is our disappointment and denial that our purpose in life could be so simple and trite, that makes us delve into finding the meaning behind everything that exists around us. While I partially agree with this view, I guess I still have a long way to go to realize such a truth, and understand the design of our lives and the universe.

Finally, Tolstoy also threads in discussions on socialism and communism in connotation with Russia's social upheavals. Despite such heavy themes packed into this gigantic book, the prose is fluid, florid and deeply meaningful. The translation could not have been better. As with all classics, the characters in the book leave a lasting impression of having lived with you. It is truly incredible that Tolstoy can expertly and accurately articulate the emotions and thoughts of different kinds of people - a protective father, a controlling yet loving mother, an obedient daughter, an abandoned son, a lonely wife, a jilted husband, an anguished woman caught up in insecurity and jealousy, an unconditional friend, a relentless intellectual, and a passionate lover. It is astonishing that Tolstoy could verbalize those very unique and deep emotions that make us women ambiguous and capricious to understand. Here are a man's words spilling out those very evasive secrets on how a woman's mind and heart work.

Anna Karenina's haunting life is sure to live fresh in my memory for a long time to come.

A Byte on the Side

Richard has been happily married for several years. Unfortunately he has reached a stage in his relationship wherein he is "bored" because of the lack of passion. He hardly sleeps with his wife and doesn't seem to find her sexual anymore. But he does love his wife and thinks the world of her and knows that she makes a wonderful mother for his children. He doesn't intend to leave her or hurt her by falling into an affair to satisfy his other "needs". He also realizes that his wife will not agree to an open relationship.


At this point, Richard comes to know of a company that provides a virtual-reality experience of having a passionate time with a simulated agent. It's akin to cyber-sex except that there is no real person on the other side of the internet. This is a virtual environment wherein Richard's mind will be stimulated into thinking he is sleeping with another woman, but in effect there is no third person involved. Should Richard succumb to this?


To be honest, this chapter made me feel low -- I don't know why. Maybe it's because of all the numerous movies and stories and real life incidents I have witnessed. This was one such a case where you can either think with your head or think with your heart. My gut response to this question was to say it's OK for Richard to go ahead and try this new experience, and I don't know if it came through my head or heart...


Monogamy is a concept that is formed out of the premise that human relationships are far too complex to be trifled with. This is what I think. As much intelligence as we are proud to have acquired, we have as much of emotions. We can theorize that a man can have several partners and yet love them equally. Hell, with just one woman, a man has to deal with the possessiveness between his wife, his mother, his sister, sometimes sister-in-law... lol :). Practically speaking, polygamy is very hard to exist, with all partners feeling equally secure and happy in the relationship.


That being said, infidelity is viewed as betrayal. While a man can argue that passion and love can be separated, and that he can have his wife for love and affection, and mistress for others, somewhere in the line of this argument I find the mistress being exploited. Maybe the mistress would claim that she is well aware of what she's in for and she is ok with it, but still after millions of years of evolution, one thing still hasn't changed - it is the need for a female to want off-springs and look for a suitable mate, and for a male to want to procreate as much as possible. Given modern times and our evolved minds, this might not be a primary goal anymore, but it's hard to refute that these instincts are really dead... after all, it's man's caveman-instinct that makes him fantasize for more women, bores him of one woman, and makes him venture down this road, in the first place... So it's natural for the wife to get threatened by introducing another woman into the picture. Infidelity therefore is a break of promise to nurture, love and provide exclusively for the mate and offsprings.


I can think of two ways to fix this problem - 1. Let Richard indulge in this virtual experience, and he ends up being happy and hurts none. Well... this seems more like a band-aid on the wound. Probably Richard having stopped sharing his intimacies with his wife is an initial symptom of problems in their relationship. If this is not directly addressed, would there be more symptoms that would crop up soon, resulting in deeper problems? Although there is no third person involved, Richard's wife might still be upset because he has stopped sharing these experiences with her.


If so, then a long term solution is - 2. Talk and discuss about this with his wife and see how this can be remedied. Honesty is good, it might hurt the wife, but it's a good sign that Richard is trying to work it out with her. Whether a solution can be reached, and how happy both Richard and his wife are at the end of it all, is uncertain. It might make Richard more frustrated, the wife more insecure and could probably result in more problems.


I pick 1... he is not cheating on her or breaking his promise, he is going through a virtual experience to satisfy his curiosity and temptation. My guess is he will tire out of it at some point, or may get old enough to stop it (whichever comes first). Most often, this just a phase, some form of a mid-life crisis, and hopefully this experience will give Richard the much needed anti-boredom tonic and his relationship will be fine.


If I were still 16 years old (sigh) and was still wide-eyed and bambi-like, I would have picked 2. Both lines of reasoning cannot guarantee a solution. They are both crafted in such a way so as to not hurt the wife and that is the focus. If Richard really loves his wife and wants to make the relationship work , then he should address the problems that surface due to pursuing course 1., or try to compromise, if the outcomes from course 2 don't really meet to his satisfaction.


This question makes us ponder on our expectations from a relationship. How exclusive and 1-1 should a relationship be? Are there different boundaries for infidelity?