Love & Other Things

"And my conclusion was this: that as you go on living with someone, you slowly lose the power to make them happy, while your capacity to hurt them remains undiminished. And vice versa, of course." Mme Wyatt

How true it is ! Wait a minute. How true it is? Or, is it true? 

Is it just another way of saying familiarity breeds contempt? May be I am making it very simplistic. Simple is something that Talking It Over is not.

Though I picked the book looking for a light read after finishing Barbarians at the Gate. That is a different book, different post. But suffice to say that though a real engaging read, it is not an open-read-shut-over kind of book. You keep on mulling over it for sometime to come. So, right after finishing reading the book, and still reeling under the facts in it and trying to judge it maybe, I looked for something light to engage my eyes. And though much abused a genre, love stories still deliver on this, if you choose carefully enough. 

Julian Barnes managed to disabuse this illusion with the very first chapter of his book. Using multiple point of views to narrate the same incidents is not an unique style. But in a love story, it was the first time I was reading it. 

And more than a style device, the real intriguing part was how differently the three protagonists of the book view the same incident. How three people so closely linked can have so varied stances on each aspect of life! It does not really boggle the mind. We know that each person is unique. But when you read the first chapter, it certainly strikes you between the eyes. 

Strike the word read out. You are not reading the novel. The three persons are talking to you. And occasionally few other persons too. 

Listening to them talk, you jolt with a bewilderment on their having any kind of relationship. But there it is. Our two male protagonists Stuart and Oliver are friends from school. The solo female protagonist, Gillian is the wife of one and the ex-wife of the other, though you will come to know that later. 

I am not providing a summary here. But just few thoughts that popped up in my mind/heart while reading the book. Just to make the context, I will be using couple of quotations from the book.

Ok, spoiler alert. Oliver falls in love with Gillian on the day of her wedding to Stuart, though he knew her for sometime before that, but only as Stuart's girlfriend. Oliver, a philanderer, not a good character starts seeing his salvation in her face. 

"You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man." Oliver

But why would Gillian love him? How would Stuart see this love? As a betrayal or inevitable?

Reading till now, you may have puzzled out that Oliver does become Gillian's second husband. But how? Or why Gillian makes this choice? Can we logicalize her choice? Can love be logically argued out?

But what about Stuart? How does he take it? Does he breaks down? No, he becomes all the more successful materially. How or Why? No logical answers. Only because he had nothing else to do? But would he be whole again? Would he love again?

"Love is only what people agree exists, what they agree to put a notional value on. Nowadays it's prized as a commodity by almost everyone. Only not by me. If you ask me, I think love is trading artificially high. One of these days the bottom is going to fall out of love." Stuart

Is this how he truly feels? Isn't anger & sadness just another expression of the love that have made him alive in all ways and which he have lost? And does he get over it?

"It's not over till it stops hurting. There's a long way to go." - Stuart

After sometime when Stuart visits the small French village where Oliver and Gillian has relocated after marriage, was he there seeking revenge? Or just looking for some sort of closure? It can't be revenge because never did he attempted anything. He just waited in the hotel and watched their daily happiness. Was he there just to make sure she is happy? Is that love? Or was it the sight of her baby that undoes all his revenge plans?
And the longing of his heart for that future which could have been his. Was it destined? Is that how love works?
But then does love really ends? If Gillian loves Oliver and has got over Stuart, why does she enact that play of domestic violence ending with a cut on her face, before Stuart's eyes? Why does she not hesitate to gamble away Oliver's respectable presence in the village, by making him out as a domestic violence type. What was she looking for? What she wanted to show Stuart and why? Maybe she desired to show Stuart that life is not all perfect for her too. Maybe she was trying to mitigate his hurt. But why? Was it simple pity? Or a deeper care? Or was it some form of love that withstood everything that happened? Or else why would she throw away her well settled domestic life to put up a show? But what sort of love is this?

Mid way in the novel, the three character asserts:
Whatever happens ... whatever happens, I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
I'm the one in the middle, the one that's being squeezed every day. I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
Bash, bash, bash. I'm the one who's going to get hurt.

Maybe love is not about oneself. Maybe it is more about the person whom we love.
Maybe that's why Gillian did what she did. Maybe she owed him this.

Maybe love never dies out totally. It remains in motley forms. It remains.

Mme Wyatt got it wrong, I believe. Because living with someone for years, a person won't just lose the power to make the other person happy, he will also gain the insights on how to hurt the person devastatingly. If even after so much power, things don't turn so dark, it is because of the love that remains. And in times, it will rise to the surface. Such as in Gillian's act. Stuart's hesitation against any revenge.

Was it a happy ending story? No
Was it a sad story? No
It is just a novel that shows the ambiguities of love. And how our lives shape up based on this one emotion and its entanglements.