The One Who Gave Me A Book – Cleopatra & Frankenstein: Coco Mellers
Somewhere between a book spine and a lifeline
If you read this (or any of my past posts about reading and books), you’ll know what a big thing it is for me to be able to read again. In the 20 years that I’ve been a blogger, I’ve had a whole category of posts titled ‘My soulmate is a book’. It’s still true. Growing up as an only child in the 80s, even in Mumbai and especially as a bullied one – this would have looked very different had I not had books.
I found my kinship in fictional characters. Books were compassionate when I didn’t fit and opened me to a variety of ways the world could be (even if what was around me didn’t match). Reading is travelling without moving an inch.
Pain is a long, boring book with illegible print
The last few years have been so hard. First anxiety kept my brain whirring too fast to be able to focus on a page. Depression cut me off from the kind of flowing feeling that makes human beings connect (even with a book). Misdiagnosed vision issues were the barbed wire keeping me away from everything that let me feel like I deserved a place in the world – reading.
2025 has been welcome reprieve. First the grand reckoning at the Kala Ghoda Art Festival this year (1, 2, 3) and stumbling back into my world of words. Then the new prescription glasses and I can suddenly see the world again! I have been meeting people like me. People whose journeys with reading, would fill entire libraries.
Paperbacks and people – somewhere, someone is reading too
I am discovering book events. I even got recognised at a few! How? Remember 2021, when we were deep in the throes of the second COVID-19 wave? An app called Clubhouse showed up as a way to cope. It has been discarded in the flotsam of dalgona coffee, banana bread and things that remind us too painfully of the pandemic.
But back then, I ran a book club called BOOKURIOUS. Weekly rooms inviting people to talk about the books they had met. One-night stand books (which you read once and enjoy but never want to return to again). Books about books and readers. Books with interesting fictional locations. And rooms about our favorite bookshops (where I first heard about Blossoms from someone who said, “For someone who loves Bangalore & books, how have you never been there?”). I did. Aren’t these journeys of conversations that books start, wonderful?
When a story sits down beside you
At one of them, I met D. It was a Readers Mixer, my first ever. In the icebreaker, I was asked what I was reading. I was full of joy at being able to answer that again without effort and I held up ‘The Covenant of Water’ by Abraham Verghese. It was the second book recommendation by the friend I had made at KGAF25.
He had introduced me to the bookshop where this Mixer was being hosted. When I asked him what I should get that would remind me of this place, he handed me this book with its beautiful watercolor cover. I found myself spilling words to strangers about all of these things. And they listened. Maybe I have just not been around my people for so long, I had forgotten what it was like to be seen and heard.
At the end of the evening, D came to me and with her quiet smile and shining eyes said,
“I bought the book! You spoke so well about it, I want to read it too!”
The chapters we share in person
I was taken aback. I hadn’t mean to be a salesperson or an influencer. Those words feel overwhelming in ways that I’m only now beginning to understand. This city I have loved so hard and painfully feels cruel and barbed to me now. Everything needs an ROI. Everyone is in a hurry to check out your verification marks in the form of labels. And it always comes down to money. How much are you paying for the status of being you?
I truly thought I’d go quieter the next time and hide in the background. Didn’t I used to be able to do that once? Maybe not. I was hidden under the anonymity of IdeaSmith but my presence has always been big and my words unabashedly powerful. I couldn’t resist returning the next week. I was welcomed with such warmth, that it was difficult to pretend like I wasn’t happy. Happy. What a long time it has been since I felt that.
This weekend, I went to a book barter in the same store. It didn’t even occur to me to feel stage fright before going up to pitch the books I carried. It didn’t even sting to let go of books I’ve carried for years (decades even). I even made my first Instagram Reel the previous night about this. It’s cheesy and there’s no tangible gain from this. But I was happy.
She read me like a favorite passage
And D brought me two books that she said I would like. These were especially for me, not a part of the book barter. So who is D? She’s a doctor. She works in the kind of world that ruined me twice over in the past. Oncology. When I asked her how she could stand it, she said, “That’s why I need the breaks.”
She’s placid in a way that I am not. Her eyes sparkle with excitement over a new book, a pretty rose and a good meal. She has a lot of questions. They’re direct, incisive showing her mind works as surgically as her hands. But somehow they never feel threatening. She always sounds deeply interested in your life. Of course, she would be a Scorpio. The people of this sign find me even in a crowd and often in ways that rescue me even if I don’t realise I need it.
Yesterday I met her again, this time in a celebration for World Book Day. Did you know that was a thing? I did not and I’m so glad that this year that I did, I also had a community to celebrate it with.
I was nearly three-quarters the way through ‘Cleopatra and Frankenstein’ and I had so many feelings. The book felt like a therapy session as I examined the biggest romantic relationship in my life. And just as with that relationship, it was also an inquiry into my identity, my traumas, my personality.
All the roads that led me to him and all the reasons I stayed through everything that we became. It’s hard to feel so read (even though I was reading the book, not the book reading me). I hated the book in those moments. Then I hated the characters. I hated myself for making those decisions, for being that weak. And of course, I hated him. I think I still do but hatred is a heavy, suffocating emotion to carry. And I am determined not to project it onto other people. So I finished the book and as the author must have wanted, closed the story and the page.
Healing happens between paragraphs
Today, an old friend asked me if I was doing better. This is what I typed to him.
“I am. Was taken off meds six months ago, have had new prescription glasses for nearly two months now. I’m not happy and PMS is gruesome each month now – literally having to tell myself “This is hormonal. Do not think about killing yourself. This will pass.”
But I am being able to tell myself that. I’m being able to push back at people when they hurt me. I’m trying to set clean boundaries. I’m swimming and reading and writing. It’s a lot of living that I wasn’t being able to do in the last two years.”
In the pushing back, I have let go of books and people that I was clinging to and with those, the memories. This has been the hardest. Indians don’t understand space or boundaries. I didn’t either.
These two words scared me, made me cling even more in the guise of ‘trying to make things work’. I can see the people I’ve pushed to a breathing distance struggle with this. But it is not my place or my job to cope on their behalf. Or to cope with them. It is mine to live my life as joyfully, gently and lovingly as I can.
Starlings and bookmarks
D doesn’t know any of this. And yet, she is in my realisation of all of these since she chose a book for me that helped me realise this. Maybe we will never speak about these things. Maybe being a Scorpio will let her understand anyway and those questions will not need to be birthed in words. I don’t even know how long we will be a part of each other’s lives. But what a blissful thing to have crossed paths at this exact time and shared these moments together.
She paused at the bookmark I was using and I asked her if she would like to have it. She shook her head. Today, when I finished the book, in the last chapter, I found these words.
“But how do they do that? All move together?”
Cleo had read about this when she first moved here, and she was happy to know the answer. “Each starling is only ever aware of five other birds,” she said. “One above, one below, one in front and one either side, like a star. They move with those five and that’s how they stay in formation.”
“But who’s the leader? Who decides which way they go?”
“There isn’t one.” Cleo smiled. “That’s the mystery.”
Last night, after dinner in a small hole-in-wall place, she said, “This really filled my heart and my stomach.” Exactly.
Book Review: Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
You know the people who say they hate romance because of how unrealistic the genre is? This is a book for them because this is about what happens after the happily-ever-after fairytale. The book begins set in such an overly curated 2008 New York, that you might be forgiven for thinking you fell into a romantic comedy. A romcom from after the golden era. Everything looks a bit too shiny, everyone sounds a bit too polished and sharp and the whole thing has an air of lifeless perfection.
Cleo is a 24 year old British artist-in-training in New York without a home to return to and with a rapidly expiring visa. Her best friend is a rich, gay man with the cruelest of mean intentions but who looks good doing it. Frank is a 44 year old hard living, hard partying adman. He has the kind of eclectic life that was the turn of millennium dream. He’s successful, has a much younger half-black, half-sister as well as dozens of other such ‘interesting’ stock characters as the backdrop of his life.
I rolled my eyes throughout the first chapter. The dialogues were just too pat, the characters were familiar to me from my own youth – all of us trying to attain the kind of perfection that Hollywood films told us would mean we had made it.
And then with chapter 2, the unravelling begins. Cleo and Frank get married in a frothy whirl of impulse, painfully fashionable parties and wisecracking friends. And very soon, every single one of their problems begins to surface. Where to begin? These two never really fell in love, they just grabbed hands to play grand Hollywood romance together.
What’s interesting is how this decision of theirs affects the other lives around them, all bound by the fragile bonds of drug addiction, trauma-swapping, fashion victimhood and aspirations. Nobody really seems to listen to each other. Everyone is too busy screaming about how fine they are and drowning their pain in alcohol, cocaine, profligate spending and resume. The recession would soon hit but it doesn’t seem to touch these characters lives so perhaps this is happening in those last gasping excesses of rich, white America.
And yet, this is an immensely readable book. Even setting aside the politics of age, money and race, the story sensitively traces how we try to build intimacy, what we are really looking for in relationships, how we wound each other in those pursuits and where we go from there. It feels deeply relatable even if you don’t occupy any of the same landscapes as the characters. Beneath the fancy objects and words, the experiences of addiction, bereavement, divorced childhood, suicide, depression, cheating and death of a parent are universal. And in this, the book carries you above all the flotsam of the rest.
It even ends on a happy note, as far as real life bruised by such experiences can feel happy. The odd thing is that I didn’t really like any of the characters much but I felt very invested in all their journeys – from the narcissistic gay/trans friend to the spoilt brat actor sister to the almost too sincere chef struggling with body image issues. I usually hate when people dismiss unengaging characters as ‘human nature is grey’. But this book really owns that truism and keeps you turning the pages, even through the dislike and judgement. Cleopatra and Frankenstein didn’t once lose me and that’s really saying something for a story where I didn’t like anybody.
When the bookshelves know your name
This time instead of giving you an Amazon link, I’ll share the details of two of my favorite indie bookstores. You can find this book at either. If you can’t, ask the person at the counter and they’ll be able to get it for you and also engage you in a lovely conversation, no matter where in your book journey you are.
Fictionary: Located in Khar West, they only sell fiction, lovingly displayed on racks & racks in a homey space that also includes a cafe. They host events to bring together readers. This is where my book friend and I met. If you’re a reader like me, the chances are you grew up lonely as a child and found your kinship in books. So readers don’t just need books, we need our community and safe spaces too. So please support your local bookshop or library. These are initiatives that keep us human, not just cool or intelligent. Fictionary: Website, Google Maps, Instagram.
Book Lovers: Tucked away in the bustle of Lokhandwala market, they’ve been around from when this was a quiet bylane. The original founder didn’t have a lot of education. But he did have a great respect for what books can do for a people. And a vision to make it happen for his local community. This is quite the misnomer in a neighborhood usually known only for filmi aspirants and garish fashions that look good on TV.
But they are an actual bookshop, not just a business. If you’ve ever seen ‘You’ve Got Mail’, you’ll know the difference. Book Lovers is now run by the young son of the original booklover and he’s a great one for recommendations or even just letting you quietly browse and bask in the love of books. Book Lovers: Google Maps, Instagram