‘The Forty Rules of Love’
(Yousaf Alamgirian, Rawalpindi)
Books are books. They are not
always good and always bad. A good book takes the reader on a pleasure drive to
travel with it, whereas bad books make readers stuck-up and takes them to the
negative zone. The real book gives life and positivity to the thoughts. Words
are powerful.Written words are more powerful than that of the spoken ones.
Someone may speak out something without considering its consequences whereas
writings always carry along deep thought process and sometimes sheer evaluation
of the words and phrases.
Great books are always knitted well and conveyed well. ElifShafak’s “The Forty
Rules of Love” is one of those. The book is well received due to its subject and
content. It revolves around the love and spirituality. It defines different
meanings of life to its readers. The momentreaders’ start reading it out they
try to finish it in one go. Its writer EliffShafakis an award winning novelist
and most widely read woman author in Turkey. She was born in 1971 in
Starsburgand is the author of more than ten books, which have received applause
from the world over. ‘The Forty Rules of Love’revolves around the spirituality
of Shams of Tabraiz and Rumi. This relationship introduced carriesall together a
differentmeaning of love and affection with it.It is said that love never
follows rules but the rules given by the
Shams inculcate a unique essence of love andaffection and that makes the flavor
of the book.
The book narrates that how love can inculcate while being for away from each
other and how it changes someone’s life, priorities and everything. Ella
Rubinsteins’s erupting lovefor Aziz Z. Zahra, a novelist who himself is
influenced with the charisma of Shams and Rumi makes the content powerful enough
to engage readers to passionatelyreading out about the relations and
relationships. It depicts that love can always intrigue into someone’s life as
priority number one. That’s how it shows chances to love and to be loved are not
always bleak. Ella thought she had lived her life. Most of its part was
tasteless and loveless one. But out of the blue she met an experience how to
re-live the life. On the other Rumi was a different man before meeting with
Shams of Tabraiz. This is how Rumi was transformed into agreat Sufi poet and
thinker. The Sofis’ are energetic yet selfless. Their life is for others. Their
love is for others. They are the super humans who live for humanity. They live
even after their death.ElifShafak has introduced the readers with true love
through the rules of love defined by Shams of Tabraiz. One of the rules
mentioned in the booknarrates “Life is a temporary loan and this world is
nothing but a sketchy imitation of Reality. Only children would mistake a toy
for the real thing. And yet human beings either become infatuated with the
toy or disrespectfully break it and throw it aside. In this life stay away from
all kinds of extremities, for they will destroy your inner balance. Sufis do not
go to extremes. A Sufi always remains mild and moderate”.
The book is knitted in a style that grabsreader’s full attention. In one of the
letters Ella wrote to Aziz asked himwere you shams? Or is the other way round?
Is Shams you? Azizi replied,“Dear Ella Shams is the person who was responsible
for the transformation of Rumi from a local cleric to world famous poet and
mystic.Master Sameed used to say to me “If there might be a Shams equivalent in
some people, what matters is, where are Rumis to see it”. So it tells there may
be many Rumis who could find Shams and many shams that were not honored with the
followers like Rumi. It seems it was a one-time happening only.
In short EliffShafak’s‘The forty rules of love’ has the tendency to transform
many readers from simple readers to objective and affectionate readers. Hence
she has contributed in terms of producing good literature by authoring a book
which has been well received and well applauded indeed.
………………………………………………
(Yousaf Alamgirian is Rawalpindi, Pakistan basedfreelance writer and hasauthored
a literary sketches based book “KhushBashiyan”)