Love In The Time of Cholera is a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Author of several notable novel he also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
This novel is the story of three people. One who is love-sick all his life. One who probably doesn’t know what love is. And one who chooses a good life over love. The protagonist, for me, is Florentino Ariza, who is the guy who falls in love with a girl and remains in love with her all his life. The woman in question is Fermina Daza who in the beginning does respond to his love but then passes him off just like that. Most of their correspondence is via letters. They never get the opportunity to meet each other face to face and have a conversation. It is only through letters that they let each other know of the happenings in their life. And while that is the scariest kind of attachment. It turns out that when she does see him in broad daylight refuses to accept him as the man she so profoundly was in love with. Her mind just tells that what she thought was love was actually an illusion. And sighs for the “poor man” before moving on with her own life. She is then propositioned by a wealthy man who is also a doctor. The man being Juvenal Urbino. Her father thinks that he is the right man for her but she is not convinced. Until her cousin comes into town and when she shows an interest in the kind doctor, Fermina accepts his proposal. Weird but practical. Most of the arranged marriages happen in a similar way in real life as well. On their honeymoon she learns to love this man who is now her better half.
A few years down the line, however, their marriage is just like any other. Lot of bickering, lot of misunderstanding and fights become a regular part of life. Florentino in the meanwhile tries to leave town on the insistence of his mother but returns on the same boat because he can’t imagine living without knowing that the love of his life is not close to him. On this boat he encounters his first sexual experience. And that kind of opens the gates of sexual bliss for him. He courts any woman – every woman who would have him. He in his life has several affairs where commitment is never an issue. And all this while he has one secret wish and that is for his sweetheart’s husband to die so that he could have her for himself. But as destiny would have it, he dies fifty years after his marriage to Fermina. He lived a good life bearing a few kids being a good citizen and also once in his life giving in to the temptations of the body. His wife realizes this and demands an explanation. He gives an honest answer because he is a noble man and his wife leaves him and goes off to live with her cousin sister. Two years later he goes to get her back and they both get back to their routine life. Once he is dead and out of the way, Florentino makes his proposition to the widow without even waiting for a single day to pass by. He is let down again. But this time he is more determined than ever. And he does get his way through after months of being a friend and philosopher.
The story is less fiction and more true to life. Not everyday you here of old lovers getting together or some thing like that. But all of us in our lives have that someone who we would want someday to get back to or someone who we would want to get back with us. The human mind always wonders what would be if there was that one decision we would have taken otherwise. It is always one decision that alters life. And while most of us choose a practical way of living our lives; there are still some who live for love. If not with love ……. And why the title? Because the first time Florentino is in love he has an epidemic of cholera and his mother confuses the symptoms of cholera with that of love.