P Sajith pays a tribute to Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the pioneer who brought magic realism to us all through books like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera is no more. The author died in Mexico City last Thursday at the age of 87, leaving behind him some of the most admired writing of the 20th century.

‘Gabo’, as the author was affectionately called throughout Latin America was one of the tallest pillars of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Marquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories.  

The Nobel-laureate has left a legacy which has touched millions across the globe and inspired a generation of authors.

His Nobel Prize acceptance speech by the Gabriel Gracia Marquez known as ‘The Solitude of Latin America’ sums up his writings and his existence:
".. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude."

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of the town of Macondo through the history of seven generations of the Buendias family. Macondo is a city of mirrors, built by the Buendias patriarch,  in the remote jungles of Columbian rain forest.  A world built according to his perceptions, and the book tells the story from its founding to doom.

The book by Gabriel Gracia Marquez was written just about the time I was born; yet still holds the freshness whenever I read it, the latest a couple of days back. His work is a delightful blend of the mundane and the magical, history and the fantasy. His narrative makes the magic looks possible and real; while facts look more like fiction. Passion, capitalism, corruption, invention; you name any element that affects our world, and the master describes them in this book with simplicity and purity. Gabo's literary style of 'magic realism' finds its high in this masterpiece.  As a child fed with enough doses of mythology, it was not very difficult for me to come to terms with his style of writing; and I am sure this will apply to many of us Indians.

P Sajith, marketing and sales director at Welbound Worldwide.  As told to Mihir Joshi, also a Marquez fan.