My tome-travelling couldn't have started with a better companion than Gabriel García Márquez and I really couldn't have visited a better place than Macondo.
Indeed, never had I expected to visit a place for one hundred years of solitude and for all the time that I stayed there as a guest, no matter what I did and where I went, Macondo kept me encased in its magical glass jar.
Enough of wannabe 'poetic' talk! Let's get down to the facts! I started reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' somewhere in September 2011 without ever imagining that by the time I'd finish it, I would have joined this incredibly idiosyncratic group on Goodreads which would compel me (though not against me wish!) to challenge myself to read 52 or more books by the end of 2012 based on 52 different countries of the world. I remember being so determined to finish this book within one month, I was almost as close to doing it as the forefinger from the thumb but as fate would have it, I stopped reading after finishing 300 pages and got engrossed in other books until, once again, Macondo called me back and for an instant I could relate myself to Melquíades, who kept returning to Macondo even after his death. Yes, Macondo was magical and the Buendías almost felt like the long lost cousins whose memories continue to come rushing back to you like waves on the sea shore.
Believe it or not, though I abandoned the book after reading half of it, the book never abandoned me. The story of the Buendías, despite the slow pace and annoying repetitions of names like José, Aureliano and Remedios, stayed fresh in my mind. To describe it in the words of Márquez, the story remained as dust-free and fresh in my head as the parchments of Melquíades despite the unlimited number books I had read between September to December.
With 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', I got a flavour of Colombian history and witnessed its wars, gallivanted about its streets, experienced its sultry summer and got wet in its raunchy rains. I even visited the seductively smutty houses of Petra Cotes and Pilar Tenara.
My experience with the book? Well, it wasn't much different from what it could have been had I really visited Colombia when its history was being created!
Perhaps because no other book could have started my tome-travelling better than this one, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' actually chose being ignored by me till it was really time to read it, enjoy the experience and make it the first entry on this blog. It was almost like it wanted to be read when it would be marked somewhere forever!
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