Copyright deccanchronicle
Yet another memoir by the author of Eat, Pray, Love, set in the USA this time. Now in her second marriage, Elizabeth gets along like a house of fire with her hairdresser Rayya, a former drug addict. And what’s not to like about Rayya, who self-deprecatingly describes herself as an “ex-junkie, ex-felon, post punk, glamour-butch dyke.” Over the years they become friends and then besties. It’s a fun, firm and absolutely platonic friendship, till Elizabeth finds herself falling in love with Rayya and looks for ways to get even closer, while staying faithful to her husband. Grand gestures like getting her publisher to give Rayya a book deal, providing rent-free accommodation, etc. All good, till Rayya finds out that she has terminal cancer and has been given six months to live. Elizabeth completely loses it. She dumps her husband, declares her love to Rayya and moves in with her. The platonic part of the relationship is now over and Elizabeth splurges love, money and hard drugs on Rayya — lots and lots of drugs because Rayya claims the best prescription marijuana does not cut it, and anyway she’s going to die soon. Rayya, however, lives long past her deadline, and becomes suspicious and querulous — a “venomous junkie”. Elizabeth is at the end of her tether and wants to murder her: “Rayya did not want to die. But I wanted her to die.” A showdown occurs during which Rayya tells Elizabeth extremely hurtful things, and Elizabeth storms out. This is when Elizabeth, following the advice of friends, starts attending random addiction recovery centres and discovers that like Rayya she too is an addict: A sex and love addict. Recovery rooms are her new ashrams, and she confesses that “Like all addicts, then, I have suffered — and I have been the cause of suffering in others.” As she starts earning sobriety chips for her addiction, Elizabeth gets herself treated for other terribly fascinating First World problems as well: She sees a financial therapist to get “money sober”, and also a “rescue detox”. If you’re going “Eh, what?” she helpfully adds, “meaning that I should stop trying save anyone’s life but my own.” It would have been nice if this memoir was only about her relationship with Rayya, who was an extremely colourful character. It’s a shame that Gilbert over-stuffed it with the usual annoyingly earnest self-help and spiritual claptrap she’s best known for — it makes the reading tedious, and you may actually die of boredom if you don’t frequently surface gasping for air. On the flip side, who knows, it may well help families/friends of addicts to understand and deal with the issue at hand. Particularly this piece of advice: “But for anyone out there whose life is being ruined by an active addict now, please allow me to say the one thing that I don’t think gets said strongly enough or often enough: It’s okay for you to leave them.” All the Way to the River By Elizabeth Gilbert Bloomsbury Publishing pp. 380; Rs 699
