Book- Love lasts forever… only if you don’t marry
your love
Author- Vikrant Khanna
Pages-248
BLURB-
Eighteen-year-old Ronit falls madly in love
with Aisha the moment he meets her at his graduation day from a naval college.
He believes he has found his perfect soul mate, and come what may, his love for
her will last forever. Seven years later, he gets married to her. Big mistake!
A week later, he completely hates her and believes she has turned into a devil.
But his perception about love and life changed when
he hears the poignant love story of Shekhar, his Captain, on a ship that later gets
hijacked by the pirates of Somalia.
As they are left fighting for their lives they
confront if love truly can last forever…? But does it get too late?
MY TAKE ON THE BOOK-
Love lasts
forever…only if you don’t marry your love as the title suggest is a book
wherein the author describes where lack of understanding after marriage can lead
to.
The storyline is simple with few characters, Joe
Singh, from the early days that Ronit had known him, he’d always been easy
going and carried himself with aplomb. They were friends for more than a decade
and first met at a school in Delhi. Joe Singh’s uncle was a Captain, earned
loads of money, traveled all over the world and bought properties in Mumbai
every year. It was pretty much then both of them decided and made an
irrevocable decision of joining the navy.
They story
starts with Ronit and his Captain Shekhar travelling on the ship towards United
Kingdom with fifty thousand tons of crude oil loaded in it from ‘Reliance
Jamnagar Marine Terminal’ located in the ‘Gulf of Kutch’ in Sikka port in
Gujarat. The en route has the transit through the ‘Gulf of Aden’- a piracy
infested area near Somalia that scares the living daylights out of all seafarers.
There in the ship, Ronit thinks that getting married
was the worst decision of his life. He was in love for seven years before
making that horrible decision and since then love has been nose diving and now
he doesn’t even likes that girl a bit. He planned to divorce her after
completing the tour of three months in the sea.
Graduation day was the day where he found the love
of his live. He fell in love with Priyank’s sister Aisha. Back there in his
naval college, Priyank has been forever teased by the name Priyanka for his
feminity in his voice, gait, stance and everything.
They used to queue up for the fall-in where all the
cadets stand in a line like donkeys and a head count was taken to ensure no one
was missing. And if anyone was missing he had to run the entire length of the
campus thrice, that was three kilometers three times making it a mighty nine
kilometers. On the graduation day, everyone had turned up for the fall-in,
afterall it was the last one. After the fall-in, they proceeded to a bigger
ground where the passing out ceremony was planned amidst huge pomp and show.
Priyank had
been a pretentious person in the entire time they have spent in the naval
college. Also, he always had to be the best and excel in whatever he did.
Perhaps, to make up for his feminine image. Be it in studies, completing
assignments, finishing his meals, waking up in the morning, reporting to the
fall-in, the list was endless. Even at the Graduation ceremony, he was the
topper of his batch.
Looking back at the time, Ronit recalled how they
have had fun with Priyanka (Priyank) during their days at the college. Ronit
shares a incident which costs him back for a lifetime. One night, he and Joe tip toed to his room
while he was asleep, undid his pyjamas, and then squeezed the entire toothpaste
to the bottom till it covered the entire area and then the next day, Priyank
was late in the fall-in and was given a punishment to run the entire campus
three times.(That was one of the hilarious thing I've ever come across. Tooth paste! seriously?)
After the ceremony, they (Joe Singh and Ronit)
congratulated Priyank for his achievement
when Priyank introduced them to his family. Then and there, he felt a
hundred needles run up back to his neck.
Ronit passed on a tissue paper to Aisha on which he
had scribbled something-
‘I don’t know if I’ve been
searching for true love,
Or waiting for it to come knocking
to my door,
But the moment I rested my eyes on
you,
I’ve found what I’ve been looking
for, and never want to let it go.
Soon they began dating ad after seven long years of
dating each other, Aisha accepted Ronit’s proposal of getting married. Luckily
their parents accepted and Priyank
didn’t play a spoilsport in this. Despite torturing him in the naval
college, he let him marry his sister happily but not without the revenge of
playing toothpaste game with him. (Yes! Ronit too went through the same. I recalled this phrase while reading it, What you sow so shall you reap)
After marriage, things started changing. Aisha was
not the same or may be Ronit was not the same. They started arguing over little
thing. They created issues which could have been resolved by them. May be they
forgot that they have to live with the entire family and not just the two of
them.
There are certain phases in life where we need to
mold ourselves and adjust with the situations of the present. Ronit and Aisha
didn’t care about the adjustment and went on quarreling on each and every
matter. Two weeks of the marriage and they can’t tolerate each other. (Is it the
way? They could have been considerate) Starting a new life with each other
needs patience, trust, understanding and adjustment. Without which you can’t
actually live happily. That was the main problem with both of them.
Well in the book, the cupid was the Captain who
helped Ronit to understand about the meaning of love debating over the
definition of love which has been lost with the newer generations.
The entire book contains the story of the captain
and his life and the tragic moment of his life when within few months of his
marriage he had to divorce his wife. Only later he had known the fact that
Shikha (Captain’s wife) died due to brain tumor. Sikha didn’t wanted Shekhar to
know what she was suffering from. She didn’t wanted him to suffer along with
her. She just wanted him to move on and find happiness in his life.
Meanwhile, the ship gets hijacked and few crew
members among them were shot and beaten to death while one was put on fire
alive.
Ronit, Captain and few others were set free form the captivity of the
pirates after their demands were fulfilled (Do they need anything other than
money ever?)
One thing I liked the most of this book is the title
and the ending. Both of them are ambiguous. Opposite from each other. The title
says ‘Love lasts forever… only if you
don’t marry your love’ while in the ending the authors ends it beautifully
with the note that ‘I’ve realized now
that love can definitely last forever even if you marry your love’.
P.s.- It's a good choice if you want a light read.
Overall rating- 3/5
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