Until August. Like a run towards a time of the year. Like in waiting of something. Something that can leave the person changed despite the alteration unfolding in the minutest of fibers that resides agile and hidden under layers of commonplace fibers of the human body and scarcely asserts its position in the quotidian existence.
August sets a gentle marble in motion in the circuitous life of Ana Magdalena Bach every year – she travels to a Caribbean Island and takes a new man to bed but not before paying a visit to the cemetery where her late mother lies. The heady passion shuts doors on her happy marriage of twenty-seven years for just one night and she elevates herself from the clutches of her familial duty without a care in the world. But what compels her to take this detour? Every year? Unfailingly? Deceptively? Fervently?
Gabriel García Márquez’s last work – one he had not planned to publish; on the contrary, had ordered to be destroyed – comes with flashes of the master’s genius. In six chapters, he spreads out his final act of love; love that settles on the journey of life, rocking at every port of indecision and truth. The nectar dripping from the images of his characters and places make for a dear collection, one I would want to raise a toast to and keep for inspiration.
The climax is befitting his heroine, who in a strange way, appeared to be following her creator – leave when you have given enough of yourself to the world and your contentment is no longer a slave of other’s validation.
Until we meet again, dear Gabo – in your books, and the chapters therein, and the multitudes of possibilities you weave in the humdrum of their being.
SEEMITA DAS 