Love in the time of Facebook

I had green chutney today with yum yum Karim food , the kind that says - Hi. My name is Cholera. Just like it did to Agastya so many books back in Madna.

Speaking of Cholera, I saw the movie Love in the Time of Cholera recently.

Now the book, was intense. I read it during my boards, before the English one infact and books like those you can only finish if you have something really importnant that you should be doing but just don't want to, perfect example - study, especially if it's during prep leave.

Rob Fleming (in High Fidelity) said it really well - "I've read serious books like Love in the Time of Cholera and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. They're about girls right?"

Sure they are.

Confession - I wouldn't have read it or rather kept reading it if it hadn't been for the theme - luhove, because I didn't even attempt A Hundred Years of Solitude though I'm sure its fantastic and all his fans rave about the language! the metaphors! the surrealism!

The movie, stays true to the book though and Javier (ha vi air!, what a nice name no?) Bardem is really good. He's nailed the character to the t, with the shuffling walk and the shrivelled look but what struck me most was how love in all its glory, the true pure golden flying love is juxtaposed so blatantly with the dirty fucking behind the bush.

some thoughts if i may -

It has a very colonial feel, especially since it was written so long back and Colombia was a Spanish colony with the closeups of the fans, and the costumes and boat hulls(?) and the bustling market and what not.

priceless scene - at the poetry competition when Florentino is sitting in the audience and Maria walks in with her bustling voluptouness and crosses him to get to her seat, and he keeps clapping with serious determination becasue Fermentina is on stage and he gets up a little so as to not take his eyes of Fermentina (I'm not describing it very well but if you've seen the movie you'll know what I mean.) It's bloody hilarious and also heartbreaking, I mean you guffaw but realise it's a microcosm for their whole relationship, him watching her from afar.

Ofcourse the old people bit is done wonderfully. That's what wins you over if you're borderline about the whole thing.

See we've all cracked a facebook joke, If Catherine was to die today would Heathcliff change his facebook relationship to 'it's complicated?' and if Darcy had said "I love you. Most ardently, please do me the honour of accepting my hand lala" and Elizabeth hadn't said 'You're the last person in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry!" and said yes instead, would Darcy have rushed back home and changed his status to engaged?

*there is another story here which I'll tell ya a bit later*

Everyone's feeling it you know - the influence of fbk. but Did Florentino love Fermintina. He just saw her. When he was young munchkin. That's it. He made up his mind, just like that, and then lived it out, his life, in dogged 'faithfulness'. But was it love? Could this story have been if in the end, she said no, and if he didn't wear her defences down, and he died without her acceptence? Just like that. Does then what he felt and did on his own with no contact with her whatsoever count as love?

I dunno.

Becasue in some sick way, my osbessive tendencies are just like that. I stare at him a lot, hang onto his every word and I do, I do think out the message before typing it, and oh the illicit thrill of his fbk pictures(none of which he's added btw, 170 something pictures by other people, says something about the man no?) But i don't know if it's luh-ove. Infact i'm quite sure it's not.

But then what is?