in another book club, an all female book club, it might have been impossible for a man to gate crash the monthly meeting. But here I was, a man, a man with audible thoughts, visible emotions, and much to say, in their midst, speaking, sharing, and also crashing happily, their haven of safe exchange.
But it seemed like the ladies gathered, had nary a care that an outsider was in.
A testament to the strength of the ladies gathered. A telling sign of their deep rooted confidence in self. Their faith in one another. Their trust in their humanity as a collective. Their comfort with each other. Their grounding as human beings. Their age being their comfort where another at another stage of life, might not have been as sure and as steady.
Normal People by Sally Rooney was their book being discussed, The title as much a statement about the ladies gathered, as it wasn't about the people the book was talking of. Everything that is normal to millennials, the subject of the book, is far from normal in the world that we of a certain age, inhabit today.
A total newbie, a stranger really, crashing a sacred monthly gathering of a dozen ladies, connected by their love of books, and their location, would never be a welcome, let alone, a comforting happening in the world of guarded and rather clannish millennials.
But here I was speaking, lecturing, hectoring, teasing, cajoling, mocking, shocking and being a pesky pest at best, and yet, finding not one of the ladies ready to bite the baits I was putting out with my behavior. I was being an imp. I was being ignored for my follies. I was being indulged. I was being treated as someone normal.
The hour long book discussion, a healthy dose of outpourings that were mostly, unanimous in their sentiments around this book. Not always the case I am told. But somehow, Rooney's writings had brought together as one, all these women, all mothers, of children the age that Rooney was writing about. In their reactions they found unison.
Not agreement, but understanding of the others challenges, celebrations, questioning, understanding and acceptance of her next of kin.
In general agreement, didn't mean that there was no discord. There were topics when one raised, some were tickled, others in shock, and another altogether perplexed.
Moreover, it was my feeling that most reactions were as much reactions as they were studied pauses, as if to gauge one another, and the mood over all, about how far a conversation could be taken, before it would not be a comfortable topic.
But just as I felt I had found their tender spot, I realized how gullible I was, how stereotypical l was in my study, to think these ladies could be fitted into any mold. Just as I felt I had narrowed them down, they defied me and themselves, and spoke most tenderly of subjects one would have deemed taboo.
What could have been understood as being a subject terrifying even at the most august a setting of scholars of psychiatry debating human behavior and its depravity, the ladies mustered every bit of courage and strength, human brilliance and humanity, and came together speaking with clarity, with empathy, with succinct tenderness, and maternal forgiveness.
And so I found myself hungry to learn from them, to watch them operate as ladies debating the merits of a book, as well as mothers conversing about their challenges in life, and as citizens reminiscing about life and politics, economy and family holidays, as well as just humans interacting with other humans.
Now nearing my fifty's, I am anxious to start my own book club, and gardening circle, and travel group and such. Realizing that where one is nuanced in their approach to life and living, there hardly is any reason to worry that stereotypes can plague oneself.
The book club in Noida, gave me a new idea about what it means to be an active member of ones society and time in life. One need never be mediocre, no matter where one lives, what gender, what profession, or what age group one is part of.
These ladies defied any and every stereotype that I could have ascribed to them. They defeated my most horrifically low and marginalizing pre-conceived ideas about them readily. These ladies and their book club, showed me that every human being, worth their weight in common sense, and who has lived with eyes wide open, is as complex and full of discovery as a book waiting to be read.
The ladies at the book club, each with a voice uniquely theirs, with hopes, fears, joys, wishes and stories that mattered and were distinct from the other, were a novel waiting to be written, a book waiting to be published, and a story waiting to be awarded and revered.
Normal People, "'.. is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life....".
PS: What is normal? That is a question one could spend a lifetime trying to answer, What was beyond normal was the way in which the ladies took me in. How they made my impish behavior seem normal. It was extraordinarily empowering to watch these ladies keep their cool, show quick wit, reveal ancestral grace and incredible strength In warding off or defeating every deliberately challenging challenge thrown their way vy me, In hopes of reducing them to a stereotype and caricature that fit neatly into my own sensibilities.
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