Review: A Nostalgic, Memorable Paean to First Love
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 12, 2013
Rahul and Seema represent the proverbial boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-madly-in-love plot. But if you're wondering if `Truly, madly, Deeply' is just some run-of-the-mill title to the already over-saturated genre, then you've got another think coming. Author Faraaz Kazi tosses his own pebble into the lapping waves of youthful romance, and from the looks of it, this book is going to create ripples.The story builds up slowly as Rahul's personality--his stubbornness, his difficulty when it comes to dealing with Sahil, and many other little incidentals eventually give way to an unraveling: the `why' of Rahul's dismal behavior, a girl named Seema. As soon as the book touches on Seema, everything clicks back in their right place.Rahul, the embodiment of the kiss-and-tell, overly confident strapping young lad, meets the girl that turns his knees into rubber, the Kryptonite to Rahul's Superman. Seema, on the other hand, is carefully, painstakingly painted in delicious superlatives: how slim is her waist, how angelic is her face, how the sun kisses her hair. Which is not bad at all: remember how we used to regard our first love in the same ideal way?Faraaz Kazi masterfully creates a world that I believe everyone can relate to--a world where everyone was young, in love, and where anything seems possible. Kazi's language is smooth and effective, and he knows exactly where to push the right buttons. What's more, the author deftly manages to slip in memorable nuggets of wisdom, or quotable quotes that serve well their purpose beyond the book's scope. One favorite line: "Beauty can only be best described at its origin through a befuddling silence, the kind that leaves one almost on the verge of a pleasurable death, just because one chooses beauty over life."It is as if `Truly, Madly Deeply" is sublime poetry about love, but in the form of prose--all these events and the twists and turns and the "dance" that is Rahul and Seema's youthful love affair are nothing but flesh to something more eternal. If anything, the book is a deeply entertaining yarn, one that could make you chuckle and smile at certain points, and throughout the story pine for the love-struck moments of your own youth.Faraaz Kazi deserves the "Nicholas Sparks of India" moniker, and this book holds one more candle to that claim. Download or get a copy of this book now.Five stars, of course.