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The sun rose. Its rays fell in sharp wedges inside the room. Whatever the light touched became dowered with a fanatical existence. A plate was like a white lake. A knife looked like a dagger of ice. Suddenly my copy of ‘The Waves� became alive as the clouds on the cover page started floating in resplendent movements and the water of the ocean moved swiftly over the edges of several dog-eared pages carrying along thousands of words written upon them, to a world they rightfully belongs to. Drifting in the cradle of nature, under the roof of blue/black sky, amidst beauty they could equate with. Merging into the ubiquitous elements of the cosmos, they were finally home. The waves...finally broke out.

I’m stunned. I’m in a dire need of phrases. Right phrases. Perfect phrases. Phrases that can describe a smidgen of splendor this book contain. But I’m inadequate. Immensely inadequate. I wish I were a poet or a writer. I’m neither and I have no one to blame. Yet I’m vacillating between being angry and being envious. Angry with? Envious Of? I better avoid questions and negative words. This is not the right place when this is THE right book. I’m in awe of Virginia Woolf. That’s more like it. I’m...I, I, I, she busted this very ‘I� with her mesmerizing sentences in The Waves. Waves that can’t exist in isolation. They need water, they need wind, and they need rhythm. They need to be the ‘sum total� to be a ‘whole�. Likewise, Bernard, Susan, Louis, Jinny, Neville and Rhoda, who have their individual lives but they also exist to fulfill other lives. The lives of their friends, their lovers and eventually, their own.

This is my second outing with Virginia Woolf. By way of To the Lighthouse, I treaded my path towards the shore while assessing the depth of the ocean and the vastness of horizon in order to prepare myself to tackle the waves. But kindly mark my words here: nothing can prepare you for that. I have taken a vow after reading The Waves that I’ll never entitle any book as my favorite until and unless I read all the great novels the world of literature has to offer. It seems improbable but fascinating to think of because otherwise I believe it’s nothing but a folly, an unfair judgment on our part. I can say ‘never before� though. Yes. Never before I’ve read a book like this. Its beauty is excruciating to the extent that on several occasions I had to stop reading it. It was intolerable to carry on with so much magnificence on display as if you’re witnessing the creation of the world with your naked eyes.

The book follows the lives of six friends and their individual thought processes from childhood to their youth, from marriage to children, from middle age to death. The whole book is in the form of internal monologues with few initial elucidations about who is thinking what but that too is later withdrawn by Woolf with a belief in readers (I suppose!) that they’ll identify the characters through their cerebration only. This does make it sound a bit difficult and apparently boring but it’s not, it can’t be. It can be slightly demanding of your concentration but it’s sure to hook you from the very first sentence so it won’t be hard to focus except when you start ruminating about your life only. That’s where another brilliance of this novel lies. It’s so easy to relate with it. May be not with specifics but the generalities it implies.

We have chosen now, or sometimes it seems the choice was made for us—a pair of tongs pinched us between the shoulders. I chose. I took the print of life not outwardly, but inwardly upon the raw, the white, the unprotected fibre. I am clouded and bruised with the print of minds and faces and things so subtle that they have smell, colour, texture, substance, but no name.

Our lives are nothing but a multitude of moments, of choices made, of friends found and lost, of replacements, of connections made, of books read, of words written, of mistakes committed, of lessons learnt, of stories told, of finding ourselves. We know all this to some extent and probably Woolf also knew that everybody know this but still she went on to write something unique to show rather than tell. She aimed at finding a thread, a fine thread that binds us all together. She shows what makes us all different and yet makes us one. She shows the power of one single person, one single moment which is enough to act as a unifying force. There is poetry, yes. There is lyrical prose too. There is music and rhythm. There is no plot- I’m writing the waves to a rhythm not to a plot. True. There is saturation of every atom. Everything is here, everything. In the process of my reading, I was wondering if she used custom made words but no, I’ve come across them before but they never sound so enchanting to me. And that’s how it is. Sometimes we read thousands of words and not a single one of them rings true and sometimes we happen upon a book like The Waves in which every single word is conveying a truth of our being.

I’m not sure how consciously I have been able to follow the stream of thoughts of various characters but I know this much- I have read this book now and I found a part of my past in musings of Jinny and Louis, a part of my present in musings of Susan and Bernard, an appreciation and anticipation for my future in musings of Rhoda and Neville. I’ll read this book again, hoping to find a part of my then past, present and future. The equation of tenses will change but the words shall remain intact in their truth and beauty. Those of you, who haven’t read it, please do yourself a favor and read it soon. Read it coming Thursday or Saturday. Read it coming July or September. Read it in 2014 or 2025. Just read it before you die.

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and fall and rise again. I am a poet, yes.