First Love

They say that first loves last forever. Maybe. Mine did. I still remember the day I lay my eyes on that jacket for the very first time. Dusty brown, frayed at the edges but still elegant in its own way. Richard’s jacket...and Florentyna’s...and in a way, mine too. Something that covered me during all those years of trying to be...umm...me. One of those things... My first love, like it usually goes with first loves, wasn’t the ‘coolest’ choice, but I held on to it with all my life.

My first love – Jeffery Archer’s “The Prodigal Daughter”.

Was just going through the book for the nth time again last night, suddenly all that it has given me, all that it has meant to me struck me with full force. I’ve gone far ahead with my reading. From Dr Seuss to Ayn Rand to Aristotle to Russell to Camus to Soseki to Zafon to God knows where, the journey still goes on, but Florentyna still waits patiently at my desk. It’s the one book that never loses its place from my desk. It finds its way into my bag when I’m leaving for long periods of time – no, really, I don’t put it there. It really does find its way there.
The fact is that by all standards, it is not an “outstanding” novel, at all. Not a classic (not even close!). And no, it surely isn't controversial like say, Animal Farm or Delta of Venus etc.! Seriously, I myself can name so many others that I’ve enjoyed with greater relish as well as those select few which have made me think and act in ways and through means incomprehensible even to myself.
Anyway, coming back to the point...so, in terms of historical detail, actually speaking, Kane and Abel, Archer’s previous novel in his famous trilogy (Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter and Shall We Tell The President) is far more interesting and believable. The story of TPD is quite ordinary compared to some of Archer’s other works like the aforementioned novels or others like First Among Equals or A Matter of Honour or Honour Among Thieves etc or his excellent collection of short stories. Prodigal daughter Florentyna’s birth, her intelligence, hard work, her first lesson at learning to deserve the wealth she is bound to inherit, he first brush with life’s bitch – love, her achieving all that she’s ever dreamed of in ways she thought existed only in movies and losing out on things and people that matter most to her…sounds right out of an episode of The Bold and The Beautiful or Dynasty or something, right? But it isn’t. It isn’t, because... well... its got a flair of its own, a flair that could never be reproduced – not even by the same authors (check out his latest works like The Eleventh Commandment or To Cut A Long Story Short! Dear Lord!)... but all said and done... still, I vote for Florentyna – as the young Ms. Rosnovski, as well as when she’s older – as Mrs. Kane.
A close and really obnoxious friend of mine once very confidently analyzed women’s psyche(s) for me over a coffee (it was more like three coffees not one... three coffees and one bitten head on the table – his, but of course). Anyway, so he went on to tell me how we, women, have already got this image of a perfect man in our heads. This image is what messes up our lives because we tend to take it all very seriously. Everything. Even the little snips and cuts and stitches that we think we’re so adept at to sew up that final draft of the image that we spend half (or maybe the whole) of our lives trying to find. I agreed with him in this. Yes. We do make that mistake – at least most of us do.
But I never needed to imagine, I said. Archer had done it for me. Richard (it was when he went on to analyze how that was wrong that the violence commenced. Yes. Guilty as charged, but one hell of a happy convict!)
So anyway, Richard. Just three words. What a sweetheart! How could I, all of thirteen, not fall head over heels in love with him? He’s got all it takes to be that perfect man, that guy who stands by you in thick and thin and makes you understand what an idiot you have been when you end up standing facing a thousand people and someone throws a pie on your face because some random newspaper ran a story on how you didn’t separate your garbage... and then of course, there’s Edward – the perfect friend.
There’s just so much I can write... its like when you come home after your first prom date feeling like the last person on the earth believing that you never want to talk about what just happened because its so private, so personal so yours and then the first thing you do is call Suzie cuz she’s your best friend, and find her line busy, so then you call Jane, but she’s not back home yet and you get screamed at for having called up so late and you call someone else and then someone else and then someone else...and then finally you write it all down on a piece of paper with bright shiny eyes and bury it in your wardrobe in a place no one but you will ever find it...and then, years later, find it (in that same place) as you’re searching for some toy to keep your little one from crying his eyes out. You find that little time capsule, and suddenly that day, that evening...that other life, that other you...it all comes back to you in all its entirety, and you open those pages with shiny eyes yet again...and relive it all...something of the sort happened last evening. I went and had a ball of a time with Florentyna, Richard and Edward. It was really wonderful. Flooded with memories, I went to bed at three in the morning – happy.

First loves are like magic, a single heartbeat and you could miss the trick of your lifetime...they defy logic, defy rationality and more often than not parents and teachers too...whatever else they do or not, whatever they mean or don’t, one thing’s certain for sure...they definitely last forever.