Dear ‘A Man Called Ove’...

I never expected to fall in love with you. Much like the man whose name you bear, your arrival was as inconspicuous as any. And yet, your departure stained. I ask myself- how does a man who is disgustingly loathsome, at the same instance, become one of the most beloved characters I’ve ever had the fortune to meet?

How does a man who shouts at shop clerks, threatens to report his neighbors, and seems allergic to kindness  somehow become the beating heart of a story that feels like home?

I mean, 

You're not ostentatious. 

You don't make an effort to please or pacify.

There aren't any dramatic plot twists, love triangles, or large-scale car chases. 

What you do possess is sincerity. 

Unimaginable depth. 

And a sort of emotional candor that made me smile, feel changed, and be gutted.

And I believe, that is the greatest rarity of all. 

When I first met Ove, I thought I knew who he was. A grump. A stickler. An old twit at the brink of death who was jealous of all the younglings before him.

Atleast that’s what he appeared to be, at face value.

The kind of man who measures every neighbor’s parking job against some invisible standard. 

The kind of man who looked at your recycling with a staunch disapproval.

The kind of man who argued that there was a correct way to shovel snow, and that everyone else’s method was either lazy, inefficient, or flat-out wrong.

The kind of man who believed rules existed for a reason-  and that people who ignored them were either anarchists or complete idiots. 

And yet, somehow, as the pages went by, I realized I didn’t know him at all. He was layered; like any human being, bruised, kind in a way no one had ever understood- not even himself.

What I learned - what you taught me- is that there are people like Ove in the world. Everywhere. People we dismiss. 

People we mock. 

People we avoid in elevators.

We call them grumpy. Bitter. Difficult. We roll our eyes when they complain, we whisper behind their backs when they’re too blunt, and we assume- arrogantly- that they must have lived small, sad, rigid lives.

But Ove? Ove really loved.

Not loudly. Not with poems or flowers or kisses in the rain. He loved by doing. By staying. By building. By fixing. He loved through his hands- hammering, repairing, holding, protecting.

Ove is the kind of man who builds a life around another person. And when he loses her, he becomes lost himself. And that’s the part that wrecked me. Because the truth is, I didn’t just fall in love with Ove. I fell in love with his love.  I never really met Sonja.  But somehow I missed her dearly.

You made me understand grief in a way most books can’t.As an everyday haunting.

You showed me how grief can make someone unrecognizable- even to themselves.

And how, sometimes, surviving isn’t about "moving on," but about relearning how to exist.

And then came Parvaneh.

Oh, Parvaneh.

The unstoppable force that met the immovable object Ove. A woman who didn’t knock politely on the door of Ove’s life, but kicked it in and made herself at home. And she brought with her noise. 

Chaos. 

Children. 

Sarcasm.

And the most important thing of all- need.

You gave Ove a second chance at mattering.

And that broke me in the best possible way. Because what Parvaneh saw wasn’t a bitter old man. She saw a man who still had something to give. A man who wasn’t done yet, how much ever he wanted to. And through her- and the cat, and Jimmy, and the broken radiators and flat tires and random emergencies- Ove lived again. 

He still hated parking violations, mind you. He still yelled. He was still Ove. But he found his place again. You didn’t give him a perfect ending. You just gave him peace.

And maybe that’s why I love you so much.

Because you reminded me that life is made up of small things. Meals left at the door. Cups of coffee refused but appreciated. Driving lessons. IKEA furniture. Arguments over Saabs and Volvos.

You taught me that a life doesn’t have to be loud to be meaningful. And that love - true love -is sometimes quiet, unspoken, stubborn, and everlasting.

So yes, I fell in love with you. Not for your twists, or for your wit, though you do have plenty of that. But because you made me look at the world a little differently.

You made me pause before judging people.

You made me wonder what stories exist behind the front doors we pass every day.

You made me feel something that lingered long after I closed your final page.

And if that isn’t love, then what is?

With much love,

Nivrrithi

Written by Nivrrithi Arvindkumar