Alchemy of Desire

You know you have read an amazing book when, once you have read the last page, the last word and the syllable, you feel it's complete. Some like the feeling of being left there in the vacuum, the suspension suddenly removed leaving them grappling with the reality all of a sudden. I don't - I love the feeling of emotional closure when my senses, my imagination and my curiosity are satiated; where the emotional high is not a moment but a state that you revel in for sometime, sometimes for a long time; That moment in a quiet room when I close my eyes and feel the book sinking into me, into my very being, my creativity, thought process and into my every form of expression. I felt it day before yesterday.

Alchemy of Desire.

I have been dissecting the book in my head for the last two days trying to understand why I liked the book so much. I have always believed that a novel is in the end about saying a story - a plot that stands on top characters you can distinguish, connect to and cry or smile with. This book has a super wafer thin plot - like two cameras 50 years apart taking turns to showcase life as it is, in a 2x fast forward mode. Life that's as predictable as a walk to the bathroom on the dullest days of the month. Fizz is the only character that stays in mind while the rest are just a blip in the radar. So, plot can't be it.

Style? To a large extent Yes. Refreshingly original - be it the metaphors, the similies, the expletives and the exaggerations. The choice of tone, language and expletives is strictly defined by the mood and the impact and not by any effort to rhyme or rhapsodize. Disjoint phrases, Trailing sentences, sometimes just words say so much more than long winding sentences that refuse to end (like the ones in my blog). One word and you understand the subtlest of emotions that traveled all the way to the nib of the pen from the abyss of the heart.

Sex? As the author says in the beginning of the book, Sex is the strongest bond - I am sure the spending front benchers, the showering dhupias and thriving bhatt barons will vouch for that. Sex is the prose, punctuation and raison d'être of the book. Every detail, every form and style (pre-marital, marital, intellectual, self love, homosexuality) is described in vivid detail. But for the first time - I found truth in the argument of sex as a work of art. The prose reflects a man who not only is comfortable writing about it, but also living with it - and experiencing it as any other emotion like happiness, thrill or pain without distorting it into a forbidden fruit adorned in gaudy lights weighed down by the cultural, moral, and religious dues. Of course, after sometime one gets the feeling that, no pun intended, sex does suffer from overexposure by a wee bit.

Love? As the characters exit, the style blurs and the sex rises, falls, whimpers, whispers and lies there wistfully what binds them all together is love. Love that expresses itself through every stroke of the pen, every pore in the paper - love so real and so complete that you can touch the sheets and feel it in your soul. Fizz (or Fiza) is not just a character - She becomes that one person who wished you had met, the one who left a heart shaped hole in your life, touched you for an instant and found a place in your heart for a lifetime or for the few lucky ones, is the one they wake up next to everyday and find true happiness watching her sleep like a child.

Sex is not the strongest bond. Love is - And Alchemy of desire is a standing proof - a very well written, touching proof at that.