Review: 5 stars
I encountered my Margo Roth Spiegelman when I was in 9th standard. She was not only an image that I had created in my mind – she was also pretty much fictive. Ladies & gentlemen, I was head-over-heels in love with Hermione Granger, and if you had encountered me then, I would have sounded quite ridiculous. With fervent devotion, I would cut out newspaper clippings featuring her (i.e. her off-screen avatar Emma) and stick them on my cupboard, I would pray to god with equal piety asking for her in my life when just two years before I asked him to make me Superman or provide me with a fluffy, electric Pikachu, I watched the movies over and over again, I read the books again and again and there was that sweet ache in my heart when I realized that though I loved her, I would never be able to be occupy the same space-time as her. Over the years, Hermione had been replaced by a school crush or a college heartthrob, but the premise remained more-or-less the same. To me, they always felt more than what they actually were. I would look at them in a certain way, from quite afar, each having a bit of Hermione in them and then rationalize how I was quite inadequate and unsuitable for them. After every such rationalization, I returned to books & studies.
I am going to be 25 today. Numerically, I would be coming-of-age tonight – what with our obsessions with centuries and half-centuries and quarter-centuries. In contrast, Quentin Jacobsen’s coming-of-age seemed more natural, dramatic and American; though I guess I learnt similar lessons that he did or John Green wanted all teenagers to learn (though I am not one!). The newspaper clippings on my cupboard have turned brown with oxidation of the glue that held them, I no longer believe in God and I have stopped dreaming about Hemione Granger. Human-beings are a difficult species to understand and much more difficult to empathize with. We are not a bundle of strings that easily snap, nor are one interconnected mass of consciousness like the Na’avi of Pandora. We use different filters to perceive the world and the way we cope with its apathy and indifference differs. All my idols have been fictitious – because they have absolute goodness of heart and their deeds have flawless perfection. You can aspire to their level of awesomeness but never achieve it. Real human-beings are flawed.
To me, even now, the mind of a girl is inscrutable. I have been subjected to extreme kindness and total indifference by the same person without there being any change in the dynamics. I guess everyone craves for consistency and permanence, everyone yearns for happily ever after, in a world which is anything but. Human beings are moody, dynamic and complex and they cannot be reduced to a collection of unchanging character traits.
So, while Margo finds it difficult to cope with the two-dimensional artifice of her world, for me it’s the multiplicity of the moods and screens and masks and mirrors and windows that humans project and perceive with, that has bewildered me for long.
“I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.”
So, while I become worldly-wise as I approach my 25th birthday, as I see people as they really are and accept them as they really are and ask them when I am not sure how they feel, I still need to overcome one of the greatest challenges of my life – to accept myself as I really am, and love myself with all the flaws that I possess. I need to learn to empathize with myself.
Thank you, John Green, for once again illustrating how frustrating and joyous it is to be truly human!
Alienman 