The Memory of Love

I have in the past mentioned a couple of books in my posts in passing without going into any of them in much detail. One of the books I have read in the recent past was 'The Memory of Love' by Aminatta Forna. Though the book in itself was quite interesting, the part that has stuck with me since the first time I read about it is the very name of the book-The Memory of Love. To be honest, I am not quite sure what about this particular turn of words stayed with me. Was it the palpable yearning associated with it? Or was it the intense desire on part of the protagonist to go back to the times when love was not a mere memory, when love was the reality, when love was the present and not the past. There is something hauntingly beautiful about the title (though it could only be just me considering my tendency to over analyze and find meanings in everything). Hauntingly beautiful and hauntingly painful, as well, I would imagine. For how does one deal with the memory of love when it is but only a memory of what was, what could have been, what should have been and what is not. How does one reconcile the listlessness, the rootlessness of the present with the tantalizing pull of the past. And what happens to the future- dark, unknown and unpredictable as it is-for when enmeshed in the memory of love, does one look forward to the future or envy the charms of the past?