Why am I writing this?
Who would read a review
of a movie which has released 20 years back and although a few people still
watch it in DVDs and internet people in general are not very much aware of it
right now.
However people do things
which sometimes defy reasons. Or there is a more ulterior subtle reason which
even the person who is doing it cannot fathom.
Sleepless in Seattle was
movie made in 1993 starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and IMDb rates it a bit above average (6..7). It is a
story well told (writer Jeff Arch) and it revolves around the theme l “love”.
Particularly love of a bereaved husband for his deceased wife. The light had
gone out of his life until in a quirk of fate he meets a woman because his
eight year old son answers a radio talk show. The love he once thought
impossible again (as dearly he loved his wife) lights up his life once more.
After the movie ends you
feel a quiet satisfaction. The movie
captures the intangible thing called “love” in a compelling way. Particularly
the love which means care, companionship and the inner nearness. The love which
a husband/wife feels for his wife/husband with whom he is in love. For which
he/she can forgive thousand folly of the other one and can do almost anything
for the other. He /she can bear physical distress, humiliation and sometime
even die. It is not the wild kind of love which craves for wild physical
intimacy but a gentle hug which embraces all life. Because with this particular
kind of love the hinge pin of life is the other person. Whatever you do, your
goals and striving for success is permanently locked with this person in life.
The stars, the cosmos is meaningless without the other. In one of the most
touching scenes the man tells his son with excruciating care and love how his (the
son’s)mother could peel an apple at one go, which was one of the million other
things he loved about his wife.
And here I got involved
with the movie. It is an enjoyable movie and quite a hit (it was made with $21
million and grossed more than 10 times the money in box office). But it meant a
lot more than any other good movie to me. Because it involves the central point
why I continue to live.
Have you ever had this
fear of losing something immensely valuable? I think almost everyone has. And
although you have not lost it your mind is aggrieved because you think that one
day you will lose it and feel that it is already lost. My wife is, many would
say an ordinary woman whose face is perhaps beautiful, walks rather painfully
slowly, does not have a figure worth any attention, but to me she is more
valuable than my own life. Although she is very near me most of the time I feel
like I have not got enough of her. I fear losing her and sometimes feel as if I
have lost her. So many times I ponder what life would be without her. It will
be like I will be blinded and maimed for the rest of my life or even worse.
We do not have much
physical intimacy. I have forgotten when I last had sex with her (I am 55 now).
And we have fights, sometimes stormy, about little things of life. We do finger
point each for not doing this and that and she and I shout at each other at the
top of our voice. Yet when I snuggle beside her and she tells me that she had
seen an orange colored cat which even said “meow” when she approached him the
world melts within me. The dog “Nyaota” comes up in the conversation. He looks imploringly
for biscuits and when my wife gives a few to him he crawls up her sari with his
two legs to say his love to her. He also makes a squeaky sound with his voice
to show his joy when he encounters her. My wife tells all these to me and I
feel that only things in universe that matters are the cat and Nyaota. I also
tell her a few stories of my own, like the cat in the street that seemed
worried and busy and careworn with life. She giggles at this and asks me to
tell more.
My wife also is a poet.
And I think she is a great poet. Although world may not know her name now we
dream someday whole world would know it. When she writes something which she
thinks good she come up and tells me “hey listen to what I have written”. I
cannot always hear her immediately because I may be busy with some other things
but I always feel those words crawled in the note book someday will make her
and me proud.
When I think of myself I
feel I am both a great and small person. I have cheated my wife whom I love so
much a few times in net (physical want takes form you do not want it to) and
not earn enough to support her. I got a good education and became a bachelor of
engineer. But I became a failed engineer and spent most of 20 years of life in
confusion. It is very recently I am doing what I really like to do but
unfortunately that is not enough to earn me a livelihood . And my cheated wife
trudges slowly her way to office which she hates just to support us. Sometimes I feel pathetic and once again go to job
sites and seek for an immediate job and go back to office life. Yes, money.
That will save everything. But I know that will stop me doing what I like most
and kill me inwardly but let me have perhaps a decent life financially and my
wife will not have to go to office. On the other hand I think of things I like
to do and do easily. Like writing on everything that moves me emotionally. I
feel someday someone will notice my obscure articles somewhere and give me
money for these. Because these are works of love. And when I do things I like
to do I feel great. I think my life is of worth something in this world because
I have done something which came from deep within myself…they are
original…completely mine.
Love is the most selling
thing in the world. As I told you the movie was a hit and grossed ten times the
amount it was made with, telling about love. As my wife calls to come to her
chest sometimes when she feels lonely and I smother my face in her bosom I feel
like it has value beyond money and is eternal. As I wish I could melt inside
her chest that this love even can bring something we dearly need, namely money.
I wrote this article about love because perhaps it will bring me little money
someday.
The man in the movie
lost his wife and found a new woman. I fear that. I do not want a new woman in
life ever. I just want that my wife become healthy and happy and fit ,a
successful person in life without ever having to do the things she does not
like.
The new woman in my life
would be She.
