The Writings of Nicholas Sparks!

Nicholas Sparks, I think is the author version of Bollywood film director Yash Chopra, who basically defined romance in India. His books are all about everlasting, undying love, be it for a person, or for the idea of a person. The only difference is that all Nicholas Sparks books don't end with the much awaited 'happily ever-after' that the good old Yash Chopra films never fail to give us! Although his books don't always end with the boy and girl riding off into the sunset with each other (metaphorically, of course!), they always leave you with the hope that love like that exists. Love that exceeds boundaries and time but never ceases. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I love his books!
He fills you up with hope that boys, or shall I say, men like that truly exist. Faithful, loyal, brave, devoted, chivalrous and also incredibly good-looking! Some may say that I've basically described a dog. But aren't dogs one of the best partners to have? What's wrong with wanting all those qualities in a man too? I don't care if they think its degrading or the characters in the books are just plain boring! Maybe a tad bit unrealistic, yeah, but not boring! His books for me are an escape to a world of beautiful, kind people who are madly in love with each other, and who again and again prove to us that love can overcome any obstacle!
That's what Nicholas Sparks' writing represents to me. Guaranteed pleasure, and maybe a few tears thrown in! What's wrong with wanting to live in the world of fantasies a little longer? If anything, it prevents you from becoming disillusioned and cynical? And maybe, even a little happier than the rest of the world!

Facades..

Hello there! I've currently been re-reading 'The Lords of Discipline' by Pat Conroy about a military academy in Charleston, South Carolina. It depicts the lives of four young cadets at the academy. The initial hazing, the debates on war and most of all, the friendship. The friendship that can survive anything. And I realized that no matter how many times you read it, you never fail to laugh and to cry and, in my case at least, learn how to be a better person. It also show the facades maintained at so many levels in society. The hazing is an excuse for the cadets to work off their frustration, find an outlet for their perverted desires.
On a more positive note, he doesn't fail to show us the beauty, that manages to thrive, in spite of such adversity. Also the description of Charleston, South Carolina... my oh my! It sounds like paradise to me! Pat Conroy, through the narrator, Will McLean, described it perfectly. Here goes...

Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship. I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies. You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.” 

And one quote in particular stood out for me. I don't know why but it just did.

"Observers have described Charlestonians as vainglorious, obstinate, mercurial, verbose, xenophobic, and congenitally gracious. Most of all they elude facile description, but they do possess a municipal character that has a lot to do with two centuries of scriptural belief that they are simply superior to the other people of the earth. If you do not subscribe to this theory, or are even offended by it, well, it simply means you are not a Charlestonian."

What an accurate description of the people from one of the most beautiful parts of the world! The South has such a glorious and even tragic past... Charleston has an old world charm that has somehow been carried away by the wind. Although there is an ugly side to it, it is nice sometimes not to look beyond the facade of a modern day Utopia! The facade that hides the white supremacy. The facade that hides racism that is so prevalent.
The Irish are born storytellers... And the sad part is, that this book is actually telling us the truth. There isn't any sugar coating! None at all. The torture that the freshmen, or as they are called in military academies, plebes, go through? I think of it as a fate worse than death. It's brutal, sadistic, and completely unnecessary! And even sadder, the plebes who get tortured, the next year, they do it to their juniors! What kind of learning is that? It's meant to toughen you up, but honestly all I think it does is that it destroys the human instinct in a person to feel compassion and guilt at the hell that they are putting their fellow comrades... Maybe it works. Maybe it makes them tough enough to fight a war for their country. But is taking away their humanity okay? Is it okay for someone to feel good at seeing someone else's pain? Is that the kind of person these so-called honour-based schools that have the audacity to maintain the facade that they create "REAL MEN"? Where a student is expelled from school by borrowing some fuel from his friend's car? And not only that, he's made to walk out of school in front of everybody.. the so-called Walk of Shame, to degrade him, humiliate him, drive him to suicide because he feels he has committed an unforgivable sin? That is not okay! 
How can it be considered acceptable? They aren't being tortured just physically, but mentally also. What sets us apart from animals? The sheer fact that we have compassion, that we think first of others, then ourselves? Is that what this "Institute" is turning men into? Mere savage animals? All the while  keeping up the pretense one of the strongest men in the world. Strength isn't defined by brawn. It's defined by people who have the courage to face the truth .  The characters of Will McLean, Tradd St. Croix, Dante Pignetti and Mark Santoro, aren't just characters. They are living, breathing people. And their story is one you will never forget.