“The Boy Who Loved”: A lesson for the society

“The Boy Who Loved” is the latest book by Durjoy Datta. The book is describing a teenager love story and some about our social issues like inter-religion marriage. The aims of parents in a lower middle-class family that, their child should obey them till his last breath. But as per the rule, we couldn’t get those things in reality which we want. God must plan differently for their creation to make them capable of everything. He gave pain and pleasure to the same person to make him understandable to his life. And if you love someone blindly, their absence may be felt to you, so you feel like they are there for you and also talking to you.

The story was based on a journal written by a boy named Raghu Ganguli in 1999. Raghu was the youngest child of his family. A typical Bengali family, who loved the Bengalis’ tradition, food, language and felt proud of their own culture. Even they had the good relationships with the Bengali families than other families in their society. A perfect family with two sons and the elder one was a graduate from IIT and working a private sector. The younger one was a school going boy who just changed his school to a new one. The family lost a girl child who was their 2nd child. So, his grandma always cursed to his mother. His forefathers came from Bangladesh and then settled in India. They struggled to make the national Language of Bangladesh as Bengali. So his father was proud to be their generation. He loved India and loved for being Indian. He hated Muslims for the Indian-Pakistan issues in our borders.

Raghu lost his best friend in an accident. He died in front of him. So he could never forgive himself for that mistake. He was drowning in the pool of his old school, he asked him for the help. But Raghu couldn’t because he didn’t know to swim. They both planned to jump into the pool, but the internal fear of Raghu stopped him from jumping and the final result was in front of him. The friend, the only friend, who shared more of his time with him, was no more. He couldn’t do anything to save him; he couldn’t save the half soul of his life. That was not an easy thing to erase from his mind like something written by pencils. He couldn’t say the truth to the parents of his friend, about their plan. He couldn’t say a word about his fault to others. He knew how the whole school treats him as a murder of his best friend. But he should overcome from that problem and must become the pole for his family. The family members need the 2nd child to become the strength to them, but the strongest one was weaker here. To overcome from that problem, his parents decided to change his school and he must go forward towards his desire to have a good rank in Entrance Exam and join in the best IIT.

The first day at the new school, so his mother went with him to see up at the bus stop. A student in class 10 had come with his mother, that’s the 1st attention of the other students towards him. Mainly the small child came with their mother to the bus stand, but a student who is capable of doing everything by himself came with his mother also feels something different. They also felt the same for him. But, it was ok for him, because he loves his mother more than others. The first class in a different school and that also in the ending of the session must have some bad impact on him by the whole class. But that was not so difficult. On the very first day, he noticed a good looking girl, Brahmi Sharma. Tall, Fair and attracting nature of the girl attracts Raghu toward her. But the internal pain for his late friend and the beautiful girl in the class had mixed in between him. What’s that attraction, what’s that feeling? It was the first experience in life. The old girls from the old school, whom he knew from his childhood and saw them, how they looked in their childhood. So there was nothing like that for them what he felt for that girl in the new school in his first class.

Time flews and they became friends and he sits beside her in the class. They jump from classes and used to roam in the town. They spent more and more time with each other. Gradually Raghu started to recover from that pain. That girl is the reason for all this. He used to share all his works and feelings with his brother. His, brother also shared some of his stories with Raghu only as a trusted one in the family. Since his brother was working in a sector, he used to go to Bangalore. And there he felt for a girl in his office. She was his classmate in IIT too. He shared his feelings toward that girl and their relationship with Raghu. Raghu must be happy for his brother, but he couldn’t because she was a Muslim. His father hated that religion the most, his mother loved the Bengali girls and also told many times to accept a Bengali girl only. How could he accept that girl as his sister-in-law, which was not the choice of his parents! That’s the rule, if you hate something from your heart, that thing must make a home in your heart. The same thing was going to happen in their family. They hate Muslims and a Muslim girl going to make their home complete.

He planned something to make Brahmi love him. It’s the mentality of every one-sided lover to play some tricks, so that, the other end must feel something for him. More and more plans were applied to attract them in the different movie. The movies taught us to make love and the formulas to make it successfully. But, he was not enough smart to manage that. He failed in that attempt. But she knew those formulas and tricks; she felt the same for him. It’s another rule of nature, not actually nature; it was proved by our scientist that, “Every action has the equal and opposite reaction.” If you feel something special for someone, he/she must feel the same. Yes here the amount is not same, but the reaction must happen. Some reaction happens in late and some instantly. But the reaction happens and some couldn’t express about the reaction due to the external pressure like relation with other or for family issues. So Brahmi felt that for him.

Brahmi was a scholar student getting the highest score in every exam. She was living with his Tauji and Taiji. As per her, her parents were doing some jobs outside the state, so she was staying with them. She used to talk to her mother and her mother never denies anything to her. She told the friendship of Raghu with her and the feelings to her mother over the phone. She was happy for her daughter. As she never denies her, how could she become the barrier to the happiness of her daughter!

Finally, they both talked each other about their feelings and they were in deep love. That’s the age when we could fall for anyone easily and the previous pain of Raghu helped him to fall for her so easily. Brahmi, who didn’t have many friends apart from teachers, got a nice and beautiful hearted friend, who couldn’t she fall for him! It’s the time of them, the happy time, the time for celebration for Raghu. Finally, he won her and they become lovers now.

As per the rule, sadness would come after the happiness. Like that, the sadness came in their life too. The boy, who loved his parents and every day he used to call them, whenever he went somewhere, finally stood against them and that was a girl, who came to his life just 2 to 3 years before. How could he do like that! How could he denied to his parents, how could he marry a girl from other religion against the rules of his parents? But, the things must happen in our life, which we never expected. That’s same going to happen in their family. And finally, he left home for that girl and marries her against his parent’s wish.

This story is not about a love story only or not about a family story, it’s about the mix of stories of our society. The author described a number of issues in various manners, whether it is about Brahmi or about Raghu or about his father or mother or about his friends who came to his life in different situations. Everything is giving some message to the society through this book.