Time traveler's companion

Have you ever read Audrey Niffenegger's 'The Time Traveler's Wife'? Published in 2003 it is a love story about a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably and his wife, an artist, who has to cope with his frequent absences.

It is a bit tedious to read because some scenes drag on with repetitions from both angles: Henry's experiences with a much younger Clare as well as his dangerous pursuits alone in another part of the city as well as Clare's thoughts while her husband had disappeared for a span and her fears on whether he will return safely back to her.

I guess this devotion of the wife touched my heart and made me go on reading the book. Though she realizes that she has no way out of the web, she cherishes the precious minutes she spends with him and struggles to maintain a normal life.

Recently one particular scene in the novel came back to me as I was in one of my pensive moods. I will pen it down for you in bits and pieces so that you will get the picture without me having to put the whole chapter in this column.

It is a month after the 35- year-old Clare had lost Henry. She says that she wiles her time like a ghost. She "inhabits sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing...."

She says "sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion... It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless. Sleep erases all differences: then and now; dead and living. I am past hunger, past vanity, past caring..."

Such similar thoughts and experiences! I have been through something similar and I too finally learnt to ignore the pleas in my heart and let the mind take control.

Later Clare locates a letter written by Henry after his death. It is titled 'A Letter to Be Opened in the Event of My Death'. Similar to Cecelia Ahern's debut novel 'P.S. I Love You' in which Gerry Kennedy had left a bundle of letters to help his wife, Holly, heal spiritually after his death, Henry too leaves a letter encouraging Clare to continue with life.

However there is a striking distinction between the two episodes. Gerry could never return but Henry discloses a few details of how he had travelled time and meets Clare, now 82 years-old, for a brief spell. From there on Clare lives for that moment. 47 years! Half a lifetime just for a few minutes when she could be in her husband's arms. Then he will be gone and she will not ever see him again but those few moments stolen from the past are more precious than all the wealth in this earth.

I know that feeling. I live for that too. Something within me assures me that I will find you again. It maybe to hold you forever or it might be for just a fraction of a second. Only one wish. To see you happy and well or my soul will never find peace.

Shehara

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