How much can some one wait for a lost love to realize....Florentio Arinza waited for a long fifty years... keeping himself pure and serene, waiting for his love's husband to die, to win her back again.
Love at the time of Cholera is the story of Ariza... his long wait....his relations with 600 plus women from different walks of society, that he chronicles labouriously... which helps him to realise his love towards Fermina Daza.
I read this book by Marques, my favourite writer taking a long time... about 6 months... not because it is boring... but due to time constraints. But every time I reads a setence I was back in track.
There is a movie adaptation that I watched about a year back. It was good and even excellent at parts, but the book is just amazing. It covers lot of things that movie doesnt even look into.
It is not a pathetic love story, like Devdas or Laila Majnu, but the book is about love in its various forms, wild, serene, pure, passionate and at the same time vulgur. Each woman whom Ariza sleeps with during his wait is a different world in its own, and Marques leads us into worlds of new virtues and renewed sense of morality.
Another important point covered in the story is about marriage, whether a marriage can exist when there is no love involved in it... merely as a social adjustment and a successful one in that. Fermina's and Dr Urbino's marriage proves it is a possibilty. Only time a quarrel happens between them is when she finds out about an extra marital affair by the doctor and she leaves the home for that. May be she dont want her husband to have a pure love affair which she herslf sacrificed for the sake of a good social life.
The backdrop of cholera gives a hint that love is also as contagious and lethel disease as cholera. Ariza shows the symptoms of Cholera when rejected by love...
Overall the book is not for them who reads just for time pass, read it slow and digest it. This is serious stuff....
Theatrical trailor of the movie:
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