My First Love

Written by: Vibhavari Achyutuni
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I’ve never written reviews, infact nothing of that sort. Here I am today, to unleash my obsession towards my first love – PRIDE & PREJUDICE. HOW and WHY – are the questions which have perennial answers. WHEN and WHERE – are the questions whose answers do not matter. But still, let’s start with WHEN and WHERE. The book-bucket challenge was on a roar those days, on the social network, and quite obviously, few avid book-readers were on a spree of listing out the names of ten books which they considered to be best of all they’ve read.

Not so surprisingly, I see the name of this book on one of my friend’s post on the timeline, which happened to trigger my memory, thereby recollecting that this particular book was right in my decorative book-shelf standing in the corner of my room, which is meant to add an edge to the atmosphere. Well, I might say I have overlooked quite a lot of books that have been long available in the collection at our possession. I presume it is the will of Almighty, that has opened my eyes at that very moment and made me lay my hands on the book that was stacked up since a long time. As the saying goes, “Everything has a place and time”, this book was bound to meet me in that particular year of all years.. the year in which I was still holding on to the teenage.. the year which claims to be my twentieth year. There it started. Very importantly, I must say that more than the story, I fell in love with the language, enjoying alongside the true beauty and authenticity of British English, which any day boasts and claims proudly of it’s originality.

To start with, the gentleman’s pride and the lady’s prejudice sums up the bottom-line, but it is not the bottom-line of the story that makes you fall in love with, but it’s the realization of that pride and that prejudice and the consequences that follow, makes you go head over heels. This particular lady, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, rejects the proposal for marriage that has been put forward by the man, Mr.Darcy, whom she has no good affections for, and also states that he would be the last man on earth that she could ever be prevailed upon to marry, and the reasons for which, ranges from genuine to half-knowledge matters. Though hurt by her refusal and the offences laid on him, the civility and the gentlemanship of Mr.Darcy, and his behaviour towards her in the future, is where you actually fall for him. And this is exactly the approach or an attempt of behaviour that every girl wishes for or would like to expect from a guy, more precisely, a man. And it’s not the manners of Mr.Darcy alone that holds up the story at this point in such an air-tight grip, but also the realization of the truth and the acknowledgement of such manners by Miss Elizabeth that takes forward the story to a water-tight grip, which makes it more strong and heavy.

The love that forms and blossoms between Elizabeth and Mr.Darcy under such circumstances, adds yet another taste to the story and gives a beautiful dimension to it. The way Miss Elizabeth conducts herself throughout, is something which every girl in today’s world must know and also learn, for she is a great book herself, which upon re-reading, has always so much to learn. There is nothing new on the block, which I have thus expressed. My efforts were only to shower my love towards that book which I most positively feel as the best that has ever happened to me, and to also say that the affection on it will never fade away, even if a better book arrives or that I come across, which I strongly feel as well as consider, doesn’t exist.