One Day

Oh I know that when Dex puts his hand inside his pocket, he will pull out his lavender scented invitation and I know that when I turn the page Emma Morley will guide their way through the maze. I know I will dread turning the pages once Dex reaches Paris.
What I don't know is why I come back to this book again and again. It begins as a casual read, something to pass these dull summer moments by and suddenly it turns into a mystery of known facts.
I suppose its Dex and Em that pull me to read, they seem like old friends now. People I once knew an its oddly comforting to read their story again. For here there is no pretence, just plain in your face honesty.
Finding me and relating myself to a character is what I did the first time I read the book, the third or the fourth time that I am reading it now, I am not able to identify with either because they seem like people I would know in real life.

I know I am like Emma, yet I know this too that I would not have the courage to do half the things she did. At times, the emotional daftness and the false vanity of Dex is like looking into a mirror.
At the end  with Ian, Em knows in her heart that she loved him yet she was not in love with him. It makes me ponder and wonder every time I read it. It is such a difficult difference to make and yet it is one that makes all the difference.

The yearning and the desire that flows between them isn't what keeps the pages alive but rather it is the narration, its like being in the character's head. It almost seems an autobiography.

When I started the book, it seemed like a stiff upper lip British novel and I looked forward to chapters of annoyed phrases stacked together against each other and love and feelings described in single lines but instead I don't know when I fell for Em and Dex.
Em first and Dex later, you always fall for the playboy later.
The arrogance of Dex is hardly endearing but over time you discover that it conveniently hides the complicated person that he is. Em could be any girl, every girl.

As a reader you know when it is more than just a book that you are reading, it is when you feel that intense dislike for Dex or Em which lasts only until they explain, almost cajole you into understanding until you are unconsciously bobbing your head in compassion giving them permission to mess up further.

So what makes it special ?
Its not the love, their love story is highly unremarkable, cliched and predictable.
However, the journey is anything but. the ups and downs most importantly the friendship that continues irrespective anything.

This book teaches you about friendship, that bit about it which nobody teaches and nobody writes. Its about the bond, the bond between friends and the need, to discuss, for each other. It forms the foundation of it all and losing it will be fatal.

On page three hundred eighty two, Em says and I quote "Ridiculous, at thirty eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life".
Well I am twenty one and this book though did not change my life but it did change the days of my life. Those days when I forgot everything and concentrated on the book. For if you read it, you know its not the kind that you read in chapters.
So here's to Em and Dex
and to One Day for being this brilliantly written book that I will always come back to.

(One Day by David Nichols is officially the fourth book to be added in the Forever Collection)

Habits

Once a habit now a hardly remembered memory, that’s what blogging has become sadly.

When I wonder ?

When did that need to write disappear, when did that urge to discuss and pen down the details fritter away, when did I forget about writing. Frankly I know the answers to all of them as shamed as I am to admit that.

Shamed I am to admit that I have lost a considerable amount of time I used to take out for myself. I could blame it on a thousand different things or even my favorite thing to blame “college”; but lets make this blog truthfully (unlike the other ones).

To blame I have only me.

I think it started with college, the reason that I cared for things or people which would eventually mean nothing to me. I am slow in picking up these things sadly. I became so involved in the juvenile things that happened. It was high school all over again just that I wasn’t the cool kid I was. I was the worrier, the wannabe, the acceptee.

I am not out of those clutches but I hope this knowledge that has dawned on me rather late doesn’t go futile.

Of course there are some other reasons also, the phone talking with my self confessed best friend. I think the need to talk which existed flies out of the window when another person listens. Listening is hard I have realized. You don’t need ears to listen, you need love which does sound corny. But if you don’t love a person I can indemnify that you wouldn’t bother to listen.

A theory to test out eh ?

Be careful this theory may not work on girls in case of absolutely lip smacking gossip.

Scarlett ensures that blogger wont work on her system hence to ensure regular posts I have to wait to get an actual smartphone.

However, I Bluebutterfly solemnly promise to tell the truth and only the truth and nothing besides the truth irrespective of however gruesome, hurtful or rude it may be.

The Beginning

On page ninety three of the book Sam’s letters to Jennifer by James Patterson, Jennifer thinks “How many of us know the true stories of parents and grandparents? How many of us share the stories of our lives with our own children? What a loss to the children if we don’t. What are we but our stories?.”

I sat in the Delhi Metro on my way to college at eight in the morning and this question made me wonder. What are we but our stories? At the end, everything ceases. All we are remembered by are our stories. What was the story of our life and how the story is known to others?

That got the wheels of my mind whirring; I wanted to tell my story. Though nothing remarkable however I wanted to record it. This belief was only deepened when I went for a TED event where a young writer talked about his passion for writing.

While he explained about getting the required seed capital about his venture, all I could about was the disastrous end that my writing had come to. My writing which at one time couldn’t be contained in word documents alone was now lying in tatters in an unread blog.

Unfortunately, I always have thought of myself as a bit of writer. I remember reading books and discarding them after reading one chapter thinking, knowing that I could write better than that writer. Sadly I realized my vocabulary was too restricted, didn’t use the required fanciful words and was largely concentrated on self depreciating humour.

However, that was not to be the truly sad part. The reason that it all ended was the simple reason that a blog which started out as a place to document my thoughts became a place where I would write to be socially accepted by the “writer” friends I had acquired.

I miss that adulation.

But that was writing for the masses. My trademark whining posts were transformed into half page drafts of short humorous accounts of events. It got boring, so boring that I did not have a single post for five months. I had five blogs and none of them had that attraction left.

So as you can see I love to talk about anything. But I love to talk on paper.

The one particular aspect that remains undecided is the audience. I am thinking of doing a bit of an experiment. You know, giving the blog address to some friends, testing the reaction and depending on the outcome that particular aspect will be ascertained.

So here’s to a new journey to an unknown place, to the new people that we’ll meet on the way, to the good and bad times that will be documented and just to getting back to a passion; writing.