Himanshu introduced me to Graham Greene, probably even now
one of the finest writers of English, however, when I read Graham Greene in
college , I felt I was too young as the plots are incredibly complex and deal
with the most complex of all subjects – “human relationships”.
The first Graham Greene novel I read, to briefly summarize
the story is that during war time Britain , the protagonist, an author( the
novel is told in an autobiographical fashion) is having an affair with a
married woman . ( At that time I ofcourse did not know what a relationship is
and how yucky the idea sounds, but notwithstanding that) and suddenly the
affair ends. The affair ends all of a sudden to the protagonist’s surprise and
he feels that probably his paramour is seeing someone else and he hires a
detective to shadow her. At some time in the novel, his paramour ( or
ex-Girlfriend) becomes sick and eventually dies. Somewhere during her last days,
the lady and the gentleman meet in a church and she tells the protagonist the
truth that the last day after which she ended the affair, they were together in
her ( and her husband’s ) house and just at the time she had left him to go to
another room, a bomb hits their house in the bedroom where her lover was and as
she rushes to find him, when she just enters the room, at the first sight she
finds the damage terrible. Immediately at that time, before moving further, she makes a pact with god that in case her
lover survives she will not meet him again ever. Though luckily for her, her
lover is completely unharmed but then
she can’t meet him again and can’t even tell him why.
Sometimes I think what consequences I would be willing to
take to make someone happy and however sentimental it sounds I remember the
graham greene novel and the sacrifice of that great lady.
