Beaches

Beaches 

-- Iris Rainer Dart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Long long time ago, in a faraway land, I was in the final year of my engineering course. Most of the batchmates were getting our passports made (in a bright eyed anticipation), for which we needed to travel to Chandigarh, where the nearest passport office was located. So, I and one of my best friends, did the same. In that pre-digital age, it sometimes could be a two-day job, and we needed to stay overnight there, which we did at the home of an aunt of hers. Later that night, we ended up watching a movie on the TV. It was about two girl friends, whose personalities, as well as family background, were as different as could be. A chance encounter on the beach as little girls marks the start of their life-long friendship, and they provide strength to each other through all the tribulations of life.

“I can fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings”

It was a funny and heart-breaking story, and had a deep impact on me. More so, because I was at that stage of life, when friends are our lifelines, and we had the deep sadness of parting looming very close. Few years later, I could not remember the name of the movie, or the actors (the number of English movies I had seen till then were in single digit numbers, low single digit actually!) But, I could not forget the movie, or the song. Then, internet came by, and eventually the search engines and their databases improved a whole lot, and I managed to find not only the name of the movie and the lead actor (Beaches, Bette Midler), but also that it is based on a book!!

The dampener on my excitement was that I could not find a way of procuring that book – amazon and flipkart were a few years away, and popular bookstores were still as bad in terms of inventory. And when it did show up on the radar, it was extremely expensive, being imported and all. Then last year I found that I could also get used books online, with bookchor and amazon having a huge inventory to search from. So, I finally got a copy a few months ago for a very reasonable sum of 150 rs (and I think it is the original paperback edition).

I shared the discovery with the above mentioned friend (we are still very close friends), but though she remembered the visit, she didn’t remember much about the movie or the song. My heart just broke to pieces :,(

So, coming back to the book - I finally read the book over last two days, I just could not put it down. Even though I remembered most of the story, even though the main character was loud and sometimes vulgar, even though it had some predictable sequences, I just loved it. My eyes kept getting moist, shedding a tear or two here and there, whiles sometimes I silently chuckled. Such is the vivacity of Cee Cee Bloom, who brightens up anywhere she goes, who knows that she is amazing and doesn’t shy away from proclaiming it, who can be selfish and cowardly, but is also capable of giving endless, selfless love. And such is the sweetness of Bertie, who frustrates us with her goodness and incomprehensible helplessness, but makes us sympathize with her for the way she is conditioned to be so. And such is the story of a friendship that transcends all boundaries.

Although this can't be called an epistolary novel, the story is assisted by a number of letters exchanged by the two friends over the years (but not all of the letters they wrote). I loved the way their letters expressed their fears and excitement, and evolved as they grew older. 

If you have had a friend who has been with you through good times and bad, or if you have seen the movie and loved it, I highly recommend the book. I recommend it anyway :D (even though my feeling about the book may be biased by what I remember of the movie from all those years ago :)

Requiem for a Wren

Requiem for a Wren - a love story

What I mean is, the story of my love for the book :)

I first read 'Requiem for a Wren' in early 90's when I came upon it among my father's books in his paternal home, when looking for something I could read - in those days, in the places we lived or visited, books were rather hard to come by. I was in my later teens, and exploring Dad's books in search of reading material [that is how I came to love MacLean and Perry Mason - he had a big collection of those from his (relative) youth!]. It was perhaps bought in 1974, and apparently gifted to an aunt, a cousin of my dad, by a friend. How it came to Dad, neither of us knows now.

Well, to put it briefly, I was completely blown away by it. So much so, that when this was submerged in flood waters for a week (among several other treasures, most of which could not be salvaged), I rescued it, scraped off the mud, and dried it keeping newspaper sheets between each set of pages, and got the edges re-cut by a book-binder. This is why the cover is missing and the date is smudged. Since then, I have read it thrice, and cried every single time.

Later, when I graduated and started working, I desperately looked for a new copy. It was the pre-internet era, and foreign books were impossible to procure. Even after the internet became accessible, and subsequently online bookstores came into the picture, this book wasn't available in India for a long time. After years of searching, I got a friend from US to buy it (and she could only find a used copy), and get it to me on one of her visits here. However, the original one is still so precious to me, that I haven't had the heart to discard it.

The two paragraphs of a poem quoted in the beginning completely enticed me. They held such a pain, and a mystery, of a lost or elusive love, that I read them over and over, and these lines are embedded in my mind and heart forever. Several years later, I was able to find the complete poem - The Triumph of Time, which is something of a saga. It has several beautiful thoughts and lines, but these two paras remain my favorite.

This is what the cover of the original one looked like:

And this is how the cover of my (new) copy looks: