If you like reading love stories with different shades and different layers to it, then Because Its Love could be a book that could appeal to you.
The Plot:
Because Its Love is a book that talks about the different shades of love, not just romantic love, using different characters in four different tracks.
One: Aarav, whose sole aim in life is to make money. And for that, he has decided to write a book about a girl dying of cancer and use the public sympathy to make money off the book. For this, he wants to make a real girl dying from cancer an accomplice by saying that the story that he’s written is her real story. Many girls slap back at him but Ananya agrees to his annoying plan.
Two: Rajesh, who is a womanizer and uses women for one purpose only. He breaks their hearts left, right, and center. In a turn of events, he is forced to adopt a golden retriever, who he names Lilly, after a drunken night out. He hates Lilly at first but he grudgingly begins taking care of her.
Three: Abhiram, an old man who is infected by AIDS because of one nurse’s carelessness at a blood donation camp. His children turn him out of the house and he has to fend for himself now. But he finds a family in Devika, a prostitute who desperately wants to give it up, Adithya, a gay man who is frequently beaten up by his father, and Karthik, a mentally retarded boy of 10 who Devika and Adithya bring into their family.
Four: Karan, a man who left his parents a decade ago and thinks money is everything. One fine day, he spits blood and finds that he has colon cancer. His thinking shifts suddenly and he now wants to correct his past wrongs in any way he can. So he starts volunteering at an orphanage where he meets Aryan, a blind kid, who will, later in the book, prove to be the power that will further change Karan.
What happens when these people find love and the importance of it? Will they be able to bring their lives together? Will they be able to convince their loved ones that they’ve changed or will they be able to convince their loved ones that their ability to love hasn’t left them? Forms the rest of the story.
The Review:
Going by the title, Because Its Love might seem like just another love story ready to go downhill before redeeming itself. But there’s a lot more to this book than just a story about romantic love.
It narrates the power of family, the power of friendship, the power of society when it actually comes together, the power of a relationship between a human and his dog, and all in all, the power of every form of love, no matter the connotation.
But there are also comic bursts, especially in the first part of Aarav’s story, where he’s so oblivious to how wrong he is that it made me laugh at the idiot!
When a girl slaps him for making the inappropriate offer of paying her money in exchange for writing a misleading book, he says, “I did not understand why she hated my proposal despite me offering her money.” And for some weird reason, his brand of oblivion made me laugh.
Rajesh’s track is a little too much, bordering on bestiality, too, because he meets Lilly when he’s drunk out of his mind and thinks that the dog is a girl who he managed to hook up with. But it progresses well and shows us how the relation between a human and their pet has the power to change the human’s life.
I found Abhiram’s track the most touching because of how much ignorance from real life actually filtered down into the story.
So many people are still ignorant about AIDS mostly because they either don’t know how it spreads or because they have the wrong information. Prostitution is something that so many women are forced into and the stigma against them is mind-numbing. The LGBTQIA community is only just finding its wings, but that does not mean that many people have embraced them or even remotely understand that everyone is normal. Not by their definition, but by God’s definition. And mental health? Good God, that’s a whole another matter altogether. Any different behaviour and the world is quick to label it as ‘crazy’ without understanding the reasons behind it.
Which is why I loved Abhiram’s track the most!
Karan and Aryan’s friendship is sweet to read – one abandons his parents and one is abandoned by his parents. But the thing that is hard to digest in this story is how Aryan, a ten-year-old boy, guides Karan in almost everything, including his love life. Otherwise, I quite liked reading this track too.
There are very few books that are perfect. But unfortunately for me, Because Its Love, was not one of those books for me.
There were quite a few problems that irked me.
The writing is raw and could use a lot of polishing. It tries to be flowery but that’s the thing – it tries too hard. If it were developed, edited, proofread, and improved upon, this could be a decent read, if not amazing.
The grammar and punctuation was off more than half the time.
The language used isn’t great. Phrases find their way into the most inappropriate of sentences and just a few pages in, you struggle to make sense of what the author is trying to say. The story is clear. It’s the writing that’s hazy.
And last of all, I found it repetitive. Too repetitive, in fact. It might seem cruel to point them out, but mentioning things over and over again doesn’t make them poignant.
But if I look at it in the bigger picture, it was a book that made me feel things that I’m still surprised I could feel despite all these things.
Final Verdict:
So all I’ll say is that if you like books that talk about different shades of love, not just romantic, and if you don’t mind some repetitiveness or off-key grammar and punctuation, then this is a book that you can pick up for a lazy day.
Rating: 3/5 stars
Until next time, keep reading and add melodrama to your life. 🙂
The Melodramatic Bookworm 