Image from Wikimapia.
Let me make a confession. I
do not believe in providence, fate, or destiny. I do not believe there is a
divine roadmap, administered by an imaginary entity up away in the sky. But I
surrender to the earthly reality that there are inexplicable chain reactions which make
life funny, weird, ironical and entirely endearing. This book landed with me to
contemplate about these profound matters, and how they all come about in my own
life through this book, a birthday gift (that is itself a legend for an apt hour).
So, just when I was getting lost
in humdrum, I was rescued by the author John Green and Shakespeare (who wrote the
philosophical underpinning of this book-“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves”). However, what happens if
that fault is not ours, but of a biological curse like cancer? The protagonists in Green’s
book are counting their days while battling the deadly disease and face glimmer
of hope in a unique and heart-rending love story.
But you would argue that every
love story is unique, with its own trial and tribulations. And I realized this
one, with Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters deserves to be told like it is.
Simply because it is refreshing to know believers in the power of love exist
(even as figments of Green’s imagination).
Consider these lines, which
really attempt to capture the ferocity of the emotion that does not spare
anyone: the rich, poor, old, young, ailing or dying.
“I'm in love with you, and I know that love
is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're
all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned
to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I
am in love with you.”
There
is angst, there is passion, excitement, and feeling of uncertainty in love, but
hope overtakes it all. And these feelings must be shared with
the one who is the reason for this mania.
This is the key takeaway for me in this book.
Then
there are what I call ‘slice of life’ moments in the book, where I felt “Oh,
it’s not fiction, this is so true!” and "this is lightness".
“Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A
nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at
worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.”
Green says so much even when he decides to put a full-stop. Most of his sentences are loaded with poignancy and wisdom. Sample this: “Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always”.
Augustus
Waters is easily able to take over the book, thanks to his thoughtfulness and
positivity even at the zenith of ailment.
“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with
a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.”
And
another point in the book, when I literally shut my eyes to enable my entire
consciousness to reboot, here Waters is in pain but still faces sympathy for the devil and confesses oh-ever-so positively: “Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.”
The writer pens the plot through cancer survivor, Hazel Grace, who honestly could rise through a Judy Blume book, but is a thousand times stoic, mature and believable. What interested me about her character is that she is so curious and has the admirable zest for life to experience as much positivity in her tragedy. Augustus obviously fits in her life like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece. But only momentarily. For which you, the reader, is bound to feel a lump in your throat.
And what they do to keep
going when nothing does, Hazel is infected with Augustus’ positivity drug. So
when Augustus says “I'm on a
roller coaster that only goes up,"; Hazel retorts: "And it is my
privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you"
How
authentically profound and as you go through the book, you realize they really mean what they say here. You, the
reader, also feel happy for them.
Another point which struck me about the book
is how it reinforces the fact that our parents did the best they could. Love
again drove the buggy. Both Grace and Waters’ parents have a brilliant
centrality in the story. Van Houten, another brilliantly constructed main
character, faces parenting pangs too. In between their own trials, the book has
some amazing parenting lessons as hidden gems.
“Make memories with your kid or kids so that
someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of
sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and
fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be
introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also
learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter
how high you get, you can't go all the way around.”
I’d
say, it is the best book I have read in 2012 AND 2013 :)
And as a befitting tail ender, let me use a quote from Green’s book and thank the one who deserves to be thanked for introducing me to this book and beginning this utterly wonderful chain reaction. “You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”
