Nobel Prize-winner Annie Ernaux wrote Simple Passion(1991) not to analyse this excruciating feeling but to describe it. The narrator claims: “I am merely listing the signs of a passion, wavering between ‘one day’ and ‘every day,’ as if this inventory could allow me to grasp the reality of my passion.” In the listing and description of these facts, Ernaux’s persona does not seek to rationalise or justify her behaviour — she is concerned only with the presence and absence of her lover that determines her mood.

Perhaps, there is really no way to rationalise this emotion. With anthems of self-love and smashing the patriarchy, we goad our female friends to unplug themselves from harmful relationships even as we judge and pity them for ruining their lives for a man. Rarely do we comprehend what it means to be in such a situation. Ernaux, through her book, narrates the bare condition of a woman struck by the charms of an unavailable man.

Simple Passions opens with a comparison between the act of writing and that of having sex: “It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that — the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgment.” In other words, in writing, one has to be naked — stripped of all judgements, insecurities and shame.

Thus, with no hesitation, Ernaux exposes the narrator’s obsession with a man. Referred to as “A” throughout, he is married to another woman. He visits the narrator unpredictably for sexual rendezvous. He follows the classic process of breadcrumbing — a manipulation tactic designed to keep someone dependent by sending out affectionate cues without a real intention to commit. The narrator is crazy about him. A’s emotional impact is so huge that the act of living a life, for her, is reduced to his availability. All other activities — reading, work, chores — are for her simply a means of filling in time between their hastily-arranged meetings. After a few pages, I am bored — reading reams that circle around the narrator’s hopeless anticipation for A’s visits. I am, frankly, annoyed. It doesn’t sit well with me, a woman of today, to be reading this account of another woman’s obsession with a man who is clearly not good for her.

But there must be something empowering behind this if the author won the Nobel, I think. Then, as the narrator continues with the countless moments of her all-consuming passion — her incessant wait for a phone call, the intense rush to put on make-up once she knows ‘A’ is about to arrive — I start thinking of a time I have now come to deeply resent. It struck me then that I was projecting my own sense of failure on the narrator because I was ashamed for having once been in a similar position, for being completely grateful for the crumbs a man used to throw my way. I would seek his attention even in my daydreams. I went to great lengths to spend all my time with him even though he was mostly unbothered and saw me only when he was in dire need of emotional support. I made my peace with it all. The obsession wasn’t precisely sexual but there was something satisfying in the moments of intimacy I managed to scrounge off him. Like Ernaux’s character, I tried my best to impress him during our meetings. Afterwards, overwhelmed by a swift rush of fatigue, I wondered about the truth of his “love” for me. Though I was clear sighted about his vague promises, I couldn’t stop seeing him as a thing of desire. I was helplessly aware of being hypnotised.

I see this passion as a naive mistake; Ernaux did not. Those years that shaped my early adulthood remain immensely private, a buried bottle of unaddressed and ashamed feelings. The writer’s ability to translate the trauma of everyday thoughts into words is what many like me lack, making it almost impossible to unfurl and confront what’s deep within.

Perhaps, that’s what great writing is about, to make us aware of and become comfortable with our feelings. Ernaux has inspired me to declare my experiences to the world — to be naked and unashamed — and to grasp the reality of it all.

The passion in Simple Passion is not so simple. Other readers might wonder about the worth of it all, as I did; the worth of self-sacrificing devotion to a lover. To this, the narrator says: “Whether or not he was ‘worth it’ is of no consequence”. Because the story was never about him but about her own passion; a passion that helped her to discover the capacity of humans to feel desire, to lose dignity and express attitudes that were once incomprehensible to her. “Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world,” she says.

And that’s the worth of her passion.

It’s a luxury to be able to live with passion, Ernaux claims in the end. I never thought of something so self-harming as a luxury but perhaps, in this increasingly mechanical world, to feel intensely is, indeed, a luxury. The book then becomes a call to shamelessly celebrate this luxury. Ernaux enabled me to confront my past and embrace the passion that I had experienced rather than continue to curse myself for it.

As I finish writing this, I hear of a friend who’s struggling to get over someone. To her and to all those others struggling with their passions I say, your passion will die even though you think it never will; your world will mean something beyond that person; you will make your way out eventually, just like Ernaux’s narrator did, just like I did. Until then, though, value your simple passion and observe how it brings you closer to the world.

Paridhi Badgotri is a Delhi-based writer.