Let’s just say that I shall never stop reading Murakami, just how I shall never stop climbing over the fences of this world to steal a peek into a world that was or could have been.
No wonder I found a friend in the protagonist of The City and its Uncertain Walls. In love once as a teenager, he finds himself rolling down the slippery sheets of time, jumping from one year to another, one decade to another, one city to another, one job to another, clutching the memory of his beloved tight in his hands. When he, as a student in the real city, morphs into a ‘Dream Reader’ in the library of the imaginary city as an adult, he experiences dissonance in his ability to reach the love of his life. He cannot carry on because the imaginary city appears to have no contact with the real city outside its impregnable walls. So, despite his gained wisdom, he does what most of us would do at the tender, invincible hands of love – follow it. And so, he takes a leap of faith, literally, and tumbles back to the real city. What awaits him there though? No woman of his dreams; rather, a quaint city with a Head Librarian post to offer. Taking it up seems like the only rational decision because let’s face it – rushed decisions enveloped around a lost love can perch high only in the air of fertile destiny. And our man had none of it. But does he give up his search as books become his companion? Or those very books, and their very special custodian, turn the tables for something extraordinary to emerge from the embers of time?
Reading this book, I found myself taking detours of my own. All my faculties are often part of that weapon which effortlessly dispatches me from this chaotic, mad world of ambiguity and forced status-quos to worlds that have every wall, color, furniture, door, window and person to my liking. And I like to live there – even if they vanish at the drop of a hat. Repeated visits to these worlds are what make a considerable part of my happy life, their sweet mead trickling unrivalled on my heart, the sticky mess notwithstanding.
The Teenager, The Dream Reader, The Head Librarian – appeared as a kin then. And because his story was being written by Haruki Murakami, I was (not) surprised when a barrage of unconventional side actors – the only gatekeeper of the city, speaking shadows, a hoodie-clad reader with photographic memory, a mysterious ex-librarian – were followed by a certain novelty, quietly slipped in the last chapter. I closed the book with a smile on my face; I had reached an imaginary city of my making and now, had a guide confirming my visits to be very, very legitimate. Not that I needed that validation, but, but…a pat from a friend makes those expeditions that much more shareable, and in turn, fuller.
P.S. Murakami-san wrote a short story by the same name in 1980 and had since then, harboured the desire to write a full-fledged novel out of it. He eventually succeeded in doing so over 3 years – 2020 to 2022. It seems like the imaginary world beckoned him and he answered the call.
SEEMITA DAS 