Notes on a Fiction

“If you Love Someone”, written by Harimohan Paruvu,is a very different novel from his debut fiction ‘The Men Within’. It is very difficult to choose a subject like “ Love” for writing since it is fraught with unforeseen dangers of being too personal on one hand & elaborate on the other. Love is personal, complex, tender & yet a very powerful emotion hence it is all the more difficult to sustain the thread of a love story. Harimohan has dealt this topic with great aplomb. One can find different shades of love, besides the popular one, in this novel. The loving relationship of the four young college girls holds the thread of the story but does not in any way influence or destroys the main love story of Meghana & Aditya. When we meet Aditya, for the first time in the novel, we find it difficult to comprehend his enigmatic personality but as the story unfolds we come to terms with Him. We understand him, sympathize with him & even love him for the tenacity of his character. Then there is Pankaj, Meghana’s husband, who claims to love her & yet for him his personal self is most important despite the fact that he would not have survived in his business without the selfless help of his wife. But He also changes in the end by facilitating the meeting of Meghana & Aditya.The novel proves a point beyond doubt that love is & should be free from the feeling of possession, from the usual routine of give & take. Honestly, it is a story of platonic love in which I did not believe & still find difficult to accept but after reading this book I feel that it may exist at least for some people. Overall it is a very dispassionately told passionate tale of love & when I say this I mean that the author has to detach him or herself from the characters to be able to individualize them. He has to be an observer to a great extent & Harimohan has done it with all the characters of his novel. The characters are very human, therefore like all of us, they too have their plus & minus points. I can write more on this novel but my sole idea is to assert that it is a good work & should be read by all who are interested in reading fiction.