Crazy, Stupid and trying to Forget

By: Buddhi Chaudhary

“I am no one special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”

(The Notebook)

After the “फिरफिरे” a Nepali novel, I was been reading an English classical romantic novel called “The Notebook” written by Nicholas Sparks (1996) which was on New Work Times best seller for the fifty-six weeks.  Although many reviewers panned the book, calling it overly sentimental, the novel hit a nerve with readers. Not since novels like Erich Segal’s Love Story (1970), Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County(1992), or Nicholas Evans’s The Horse Whisperer (1995) have readers rushed to buy a book that comes with the publisher's warning to also buy a pack of tissues. This book, readers are forewarned, is a tear-jerker.

Throughout the book, Spark is discussing or talking about the romantic experiences of Noah and Allie main protagonists who meet in their teen ages and fall in love madly. They are separated, though, for fourteen years. Noah was called to the Second World War. Allie tried to please her parents and became engaged to a young lawyer with social standing. But nothing could come between them, or so Noah hoped. Allie did return to him, and they spent 49 years in marital bliss, but not without challenges. In the end, they faced the biggest challenge of all. Allie was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which eventually erased all her memories. Most painful of all was that she could not remember who Noah was.

“So, that’s the ghost you been running from.” There are many interesting and fascinating dialogues, words and advices in the novel, among them, these sentences touched my heart that made me to contemplate again and again “You know the Ghost, the memory. I been watching ‘you working’ ‘day and night’ ‘slaving so hard you barely have time to catch YOUR BREATH. People do that for three reasons. Either, they crazy, or stupid, or trying to forget. And with you, I knew, you was trying to forget. I just didn’t know what.

I liked this dialogue so much because, I saw it in reality as well. I saw it in everyone. Even in me and myself. Whenever, craziness of being something and someone arise then we work hard, communicate with others, ask them questions, go different places and try to learn new things. However and in anyhow, we try to achieve it. That is called craziness (Mania) of being something. 

Or, if a person works hard but silently without giving any relax to his mind and heart, on his and own then, that is called stupidity. He loves to be alone. Being alone, he enjoys his works and loves to communicate himself and enjoys results alone as well.

There is another person, who loves to work hard to forget his past memories that had made him hurt, cry and suffered. Whenever, he becomes busy then memories become just memories to be forgotten but not be attached with.