The Hours----time ticks

Books (even movies and music) are like wine, they need to get old with time before declaring them masterpiece. It needs more than one sip to peel out the various aromas they will give. Their taste more often don’t lie with buds in tongue but on the way it travels in and the sense it gives. But we can say whether it can become a good wine ,the moment it was pour in to the cask for storage. On my first read of ‘the hours’, exactly that’s what I felt: It’s a good read.

The novel traces 3 stories or could I say 3 independent incidents. Each one is rooted to its past and impacted profoundly by what they are and how they were. Virginia wolf is about to write her greatest story, “Mrs. Dalloway”. As that particular day unfolds she decides about what each character will do. What actually dictates their character? What she is, what she want to be, how she conflicts and collide with people conjures up as a story. It’s a magic of capturing the moment where a flower blossoms and the sweet scent fills the room. It’s a momentary feel, technically you can say the instant where it happened report it micro second by microsecond, but still you might not have told what actually happened. But Michael Cunningham transpires it beautifully. May be it’s because he took the literary freedom and made a story out of incidents that transpired over a period of time. May be, Virginia wolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway and she had committed suicide later in her life is the only fact that he stated. May be all things he stated are actually happened in his mind. What the heck …its so beautifully told, with all those powerful words, expressions and metaphors above all its relevance to life, the real life, not the life of blood and skin but that of the grey and white matter.

Mrs. Lara Brown has a picture perfect family, what most will long for. She has a war hero husband who is sincere in his work and in his care for family. On his birthday, he wakes up before his wife, buys flower and makes breakfast for his son. He senses his wife is dull but he attributes it to her pregnancy. He is, the common man, the successful common man. But the problem is Laura is not looking for him. What she wants is not this. But can she say it? She fills her life in reading books. Her everyday is struggle between the life she wish to have and the life she have which is filled with the people who love her and care for her. On the particular day she is reading the novel “Mrs. Dalloway”. You could blame the novel she was reading or the passionate kiss she gave to Kity, which made her understand her lesbian interest or who knows what inside her brain, she decides to commit suicide. But her love for life stops her from doing it and she returns to her family. Eventually she leaves her family and runs to Canada and spends her life as a librarian.

Clarissa is an editor living with her lesbian partner in New York. She is busy on the day with the party she is planning for her friend, Richard. Richard, an AIDS patient who is counting his days to death, has been awarded a literary honor, for the only novel he wrote, which spends reams and reams of paper about nothing. The only thing, who ever read it understood is (from the lady who sells the flowers to Richard‘s gay partner), he has spoken in length about Clarissa. He has a chapter running for pages which simply states how much time Clarissa had spent in a nail polish shop , ending up not buying any nail polish .‘The hours’ presents itself a book on existentialism, on marginal people, what not. But at the end, all I could feel is, it is the best love story I have ever read. The one that Clarissa has on Richard and the one Richard has on Clarissa. Of all the things that happened to her she still remembers the day, the kiss she shared with Richard. That was the happiness. She thought it was the starting. But thirty years later she knew it was the moment. Richard (only Richard) call her Mrs. Dalloway for reasons no one know. May be on a crazy moment when both knew each love one another more than anything else, on the moment of pinnacle of one’s happiness he started to call her Mrs. Dalloway and he calling her so continues. Clarissa, still wonders, how it could have been if they chose to be together. They are not together; it’s more because of their love for them, which is actually their love for life. Some hours before the party, Richard commits suicide. How much it affects Clarissa? It looks she knew it all way. Her love for day is slightly more than her love for Richard. After all that’s what keeps us moving, isn‘t it? In spite of all the heartbreaks, all those hours which just exist to remind us the good old time once we had. We all rooted in our past and we still look forward for day for reasons no one can say how. The concluding line of the novel best surmises it:
“We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.”