Heartbreak and allergies

Pollen is no longer just a bittersweet short story that I once fell in love with. It is now a reminder that I need to take more chances while browsing.

There was this short story that I was obsessed with for a few years. It was about allergies, heartbreak, and flowers; too many flowers. But the reason I have come to hold this story so close is that I discovered it quite randomly, at a cafe in Udaipur which had a modest collection of used books. I’m now surprised that I even picked up the anthology, New Writing 11 (Picador), which included the short story, because it had the most forgettable cover.

I read Lavinia Greenlaw’s Pollen on a train somewhere in Rajasthan, and although it was more than a decade ago, I remember grinning through it and pestering my partner to read it. Narrated through a series of short and hilarious letters between former lovers, Pollen is about memory and longing. It captures a woman’s exasperation when a former lover wants to reconnect after 20 years, and he keeps sending flowers to her office, setting off an explosion of allergies.

Annoyed that he’d forgotten about her allergies, she writes to him about his poor choice of flowers — lilies. “The petals are far too perfect and then there are those huge stamens, quite obscene, plastered with bright orange sticky grains of pollen. Pure poison for someone like me.” When the woman’s character, referred to as Flora, initially declines to have lunch with the man who once broke her heart, you can sense some of her past hurt surface, and with it, the stirring of an old affection.

If you’ve had your heart broken, you are likely to feel for her immediately, particularly when you read his responses: flirtatious, dreamy, and aloof. “Dear Flora, Goddess of the garden. How was Iceland? Could you breathe? We make our own atmosphere. Still here.”

As she warms up to him again, you want to warn her, as you’d do with a friend. Through their letters, Greenlaw explores the mysterious nature of memory — the way two people remember the exact same experience so differently, how it brings up buried feelings, and the strange effect that time has on even our most vivid memories.

But for me, Pollen is no longer just a bittersweet short story that I once fell in love with. It is now a reminder that I need to take more chances while reading, without the constant need to pore over numerous lists to find the perfect book to match my state of mind. As a picky reader who is also risk-averse, I tend to want to make sure that I don’t waste any time reading a book that might not pull me in whole. I’m embarrassed to admit that I have also come to rely on Amazon’s algorithms to find my next book. (If I liked Tishani Doshi’s Small Days and Nights, what else might I like, dear Amazon)?

And, to think that back in college, and even during my first few years of earning a salary, I spent countless hours in between dusty shelves, browsing endlessly, hungry to find authors I’d never read. It’s because I took chances that I stumbled on Hanan-al-Shaykh’s Beirut Blues, which took my breath away, and Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo.

Not that it’s wrong to rely on someone else’s taste; I love that my favourite bookstores know exactly what might capture my fancy. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is to leave a little room for adventure and spontaneity when it comes to reading. And, in case you’re wondering if this whole thing is really just a note to myself, a reminder to look beyond lists that can’t stop praising Yuvan Noah Harari and Sally Rooney, you might be right. After all, if I hadn’t dug around a little in Udaipur, I would have never found Pollen, which I now have the pleasure of re-reading every few years, especially during the arrival of allergy season in our very own garden city.

Unbound is a monthly column for anyone who likes to take shelter in books, and briefly forget the dreariness of adult life.

The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor who believes in the power of daily naps. Find her on Instagram @yaminivijayan