'Museum of Innocence'..my take.

Since my childhood, i have been asked this question zillion times,
"who's your favorite author , kid" and my answers have more or less kept changing all these years. Mark twain, Premchand, Paulo coelho, Somerset Maugham, Arundhati roy, Sir Arthur Conal Doyle, Jane Austen....list goes on. Sometimes, even i was surprised at the rate at which i kept changing my preferences. All the writers i read, had one particular or at most two favorite writers, who inspired there writing style and as i had this desire of becoming a writer someday, i felt rather ashamed on myself. So, as the time passed, in order to devoid myself of such emotions, i developed this answer : you know, it's difficult to have one particular favorite theses days as all the works of a particular author are not of same quality, much like our Indian movie makers....so innovative of me.
one day, i hit upon a book titled 'other colors' by a turk named 'orhan pamuk'. it was a collection of essays relating to various personal incidents in author's life. This book was different and the things which impressed me more were the author's writing style (although it was a translation from Turkish, but still i could feel it), the way he described the various aspects of our daily chores, and the ability of him to explain everything relating to life out of nothing. It felt like listening to Sufi music....pure, serene and holy. In the next three months, i got to read three more books of him, Snow, Istanbul and My name is read. Finally, i had one author, i loved to read.
Last week, i got my hands on his latest book, Museum of innocence. The time, when i read 'Other colors', Pamuk had just received Nobel and his fame was growing by leaps and bounds all over the world and as it happens with every author, as the fame increases, size of their books also increases. Pamuk was no different.This one had 536 pages..devoted to one thing and only..Failed love.
well, the story is something like this, there was a young, rich guy, Kemal Bey, US educated, within that bracket of young Turks, who aped everything western and considered themselves 'modern' and 'broadminded'.(dunno how do both of theses things relate to sexual freedom mostly on this part of planet). He was going to be engaged to Sibel, French educated and again 'modern' and 'broad minded'. so, one day, kemal meets his distantly related cousin, falls for her, invites her to his apartment and then makes love to her. Soon they develop a kind of relationship.
The first hundred pages of the book describe these love making scenes of both of them. it hurt to see Pamuk turn into a Rushdie.
After that , Kemal got engaged to Sibel despite being madly in love with Fusun. He was unable to break those premodern traditions and narrow minded views, had to choose prestige over love. All being modern, broadminded things got punctured there and to top it all, Fusun left him. Then begun the longing, heartaches, alcohol, loneliness and a million other incentives, which comes usually in package with such stories.He become like an unstable spirit, which got solace only after he got into that very same apartment, among the things which reminded him of her.
Sometimes i just wonder that what's wrong in falling in love. maybe this 'fall' word has something to do with it. Once you fall in love, you fall everywhere. Same happened to the character in the story and same happened to the author too. These next three hundred pages were Pamuk's poorest form of writing i had ever read (my view only). Nothing Sufi there. One thing, which confuses me is that why all these failed love stories have so common ingredients (mentioned above). is ain't there any other solution to it or maybe our authors or movie makers never  thought about providing it. If love is pristine, holy then anything concerning it shouldn't hurt. Mybe the fault is on our sides, because after we realize that something so holy has left us, so in order to mend things up, we try, in most wrongful ways, thereby drowning ourselves in gloom, agony and misery.

Same happened to Kemal. He dumped Sibel (who loved him very much).blew up his family business and finally. He started searching Fusun frantically everywhere and when he found her after scavenging every part of Istanbul for  months, she was married, to a budding director.
Her family told him that they would love to see their daughter star in a movie. So Kemal, hoping that he could still get her back, agrees to finance this movie. He gets her, but after eight long years of  wait and during there honeymoon in Europe, after a minor fight among them, she bangs her car at hundred and five kilometers per hour against a tree, killing herself and sending Kemal in coma.
He comes out of coma after 3 months, devastated and spends the rest of his life alone, constructing a museum in memory of her. Last thirty pages of the books touched me. Maybe it was his misery or his devotion to his love throughout his life. Pamuk describes the mental state of him beautifully throughout the book, but it was really boring and irritating to read about his humility for the major portion of book. For me, man, i don't really want that kind of love, manifested with suffering, agony and pains all the way upto hell. Despite trying to mend the past wrongs, (and waste present), one can live in the memories of past ,does that sounds like falling for the second best, but, still  it will be better than the life Kemal lived. Its sacred to live by heart, but here, on this land, brains rule boy.

on reading this, one would say that i am a bit prejudiced or mine opinion is biased against the channel of hope, but i believe that there are other things in life also worth caring. family, personal pride, friends etc etc..but then you can't help it. one would never ever find out that how come love stands tall among every other emotion in our life or how come those few moments spent with the person you love become the most cherished ones and     how does that misery of waiting for years becomes equivalent to those moments spent with the person you love, some will say its a kind of chemistry responsible between two souls , who were made for each other and are just striving to be reconnected, or  its because of a divine feeling, which you get only with a certain person...dunno..pretty complicated.
summing up, book was not that much upto the expectations, moreover there were some serious disagreements regarding what could have been right or what was wrong, but still, true love dies hard, Pamuk is still my favourite.