Fifty Shades versus Forty Rules

“Baba, what are you reading?”, Noori peered over my shoulder to get a look at the book. All my reading life I have been much irritated when anyone has tried to peer into my book, especially by the over the shoulder route. It’s as annoying as someone peering over your shoulder to catch a glimpse of your email, while you’re working at your desk. Yes, I accept the double standards, but it’s okay for me to look over the shoulder of the other, but I certainly cannot tolerate it when I am the recipient.

I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and very patiently told my 5-year-old kindergartner, “It’s a book called ‘the forty rules of love’”. It vaguely occurred to me, given the nature of the book, to pat myself on the back for not being short-tempered with her.

“Is it about love?”, Noori asked.

“Yes and no”, I said, “It is about love and no love for the other person”.

“Baba, when there is no love for another person then is there hate?” She wasn’t going to let go of this rare display of academic-like dialogue.

“Doesn’t have to be”, was the best I could come up with then.

How was I to explain to her that love and hate were not mutually exclusive.

“Did you know that Mama too is reading a book about love? She told me so when I asked her!” Noori pointed to the nightstand, perched upon which was the book. The bedside table lamp illumination created a surreal halo of light on the book. That was tantalizing enough to draw me towards it, as if a dervish was being attracted to a source of enlightenment.

I walked over and picked it up. ‘Fifty shades of grey’.

“Interesting title”, I said.

“Baba can I read what it’s about?” said Noori, snatching it from me and turning it over to read the synopsis.

‘Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates.’

That didn’t quite register in my head until Noori asked a follow up question, “Baba, what does erotic mean?”

I quickly took the book from her hand and flipped through it. It took not more than a few seconds for realization to dawn upon me as to what the book was about.

“Ummm, erotic things happen when you love someone dearly”, was all I could muster then. I told her not to delve into that book anymore.

Later that night after Noori was fast asleep and Ayesha and I were in bed reading our respective books, I told her about Noori’s question about erotica.

Ayesha, without batting an eye, responded that she was reading ‘fifty shades of grey’ for a book club comprising of middle-aged women, professionals and non-professionals (homemakers). She wasn’t quite into the book, she told me. I was not surprised because what I had read while flipping through it was most reminiscent of soft porn. If the fifty shades trilogy claimed itself to be ‘a tale that will obsess you, possess you, stay with you forever’, then it was best to stay away.

The next day, while I was working at the hospital, I overheard a nurse say to her colleague, “Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele are so well described in that book!”

Normally I don’t interpose myself in a conversation that does not include me, but those names sounded vaguely familiar.

“Oh, isn’t that the misanthropic couple in that chick flick of a book?”

“Dr. Mian! Don’t say such nasty things about my ‘fifty shades’! I love that book”. The nurse in point, likely close to sixty, was blushing tomato red. “I bet your wife’s got a copy on the nightstand”, she went on to say conspiratorially.

Poetic justice aside, such occurrences have stopped surprising me.

“Yeah, she probably does”, I said. “But Ms. Mattie what do you like about it?”

“It’s sexually emancipating”, came the prompt and triumphant reply from the matron, likely mother and grandmother.

I was more embarrassed than anything else at that point, so I dropped any further investigation.

Later that evening, at home, I let Noori read the jacket of the book that I was completely mesmerized by ‘the forty rules of love’: ‘…a wonderful tale of love and spiritual longing, brilliantly exploring the universal desire for intimacy – with another human being, as well as with the divine.’

I helped her with the difficult words, like spiritual, brilliantly, universal, intimacy, divine. She giggled and then ran off to do something more exciting.

I thought about the ‘forty rules’; how the author had juxtaposed the volatility inherent in the 21^st and 12^th centuries, and bringing the point home that as happened in the past, the need for love and tolerance was again a pressing one. Putting the contemporary interaction of Ella and Zahara, the two 21^st century characters, against the backdrop of 12^th century powerhouses like Jalaldin Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, was simply brilliant. The description of how Rumi, the most revered Sufi mystic poet, was first sought out and then transformed by his spiritual companion Shams, was superbly divine. How Ella in Boston is ‘transformed’ into a lover of life by love itself, made the book much more relevant to current times. I can go on and on…

Rarely does one come across a book that has the potential to unlock one of the mysteries of one’s heart, possibly mind. ‘Forty rules’ did that to me. It was sent to me at a time when I was not even seeking answers. Maybe that’s why it had such impact.

“A book, a book, what’s in the book?”, is Noori’s favorite silly jingle that she recites in a sing song manner as she skips around the room.

Maybe it’s not all that silly and my kindergartner knows.

I used to wonder if a work of fiction could really unlock the key to the soul. I also used to wonder if it could change life’s trajectory? I think I’ve come closer to that realization than ever before.

The book that unlocked my soul for now comes to me at a time when the other book is doing the rounds.

Rumi said, ‘He who tastes knows…’

I say, ‘The corollary to that is ‘he who does not taste does not know!’

So, dear reader, fifty shades versus forty rules….what will it be for you?

[from the Kindergarten Diaries]

Acknowledgment: A version of this story was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper [September 2012]; it also appeared under the title 'Noori' in the book An Itinerant Observer.

Photo credit: Nausheen Khan is an illustrator and photographer based in Houston.