Cobalt Blue

The final week of the pride readathon's pick is to read Indian queer literature. I had picked this masterpiece and I'm so glad about it.

After reading this book, I wished I had known Marathi so that I could savour this in all its glory. The author who had translated this work has himself said that some words might be lost during translation. Normally, I would be satisfied but I needed to know even the lost parts of this book. What an interesting and beautiful book it was!

Two siblings of a middle-class Marathi household fall in love with the same man who came to live in their house as a paying guest. This masterpiece is a story of unrequited love, longing and heartbreak.

There are some things in this book that I found very intriguing and wished I had answers for those. The whole story is narrated by the siblings but the tonality of their perspectives is so very different. Obviously, it's because they have different personalities but that's not all.

"When they left, I saw four or five black-and-white photographs I had taken of you, peeping from the file. They'd faded a little over time and were stuck to each other. Delicately, i separated them."

The book starts with Tanay's POV and it's so goddamned beautiful. It's so affectionate, endearing and intimate. It almost felt like I was intruding on someone's personal space. Mind you, this was after he got heartbroken by the person he loved. How can someone be this affectionate to the person who broke their heart? I could never understand. His devastation after getting to know that his sister and the person he loved eloped was so pure and raw. Perhaps, the beautiful touch to his POV because he addresses his lover in second person. As if talking to him directly. We don't find this in Anuja's.

"Once you start living together and you see the same person day in and day out, you begin to wonder: was it for this I struggled and toiled? Did he feel that way?"

- Anuja, Cobalt blue.

The next half of the book is in Anuja's POV. She's the total opposite of Tanay. Whereas he's all soft smiles and affectionate, she's free-spirited and hard around the edges. Tanay's was all about reminiscing the time spent with him and the heartbreak that entailed. Anuja's was more about the repercussions she had to face because of her love. I loved reading this contrast. Through their love and longing, I got to know so much about the characters.

Tanay's reluctance to come out to his family is sad yet understandable. Our society is still not accepting towards the LGBTQIA+ community. That's one of the reasons why reading about his grief was more painful because he can't even tell what his sadness was about unlike Anuja. The author's writing captured these emotions very beautifully.

This book had an open ending. The name of the person they both loved was never once mentioned in the book. We don't know why he left, what happened to him, whom he loved exactly. I needed answers to these questions. I wish the book was prolonged a little but the ending felt very realistic and justified. I still can't process some thoughts so if this rant confused you, that's because I'm confused as well.