Tishani Doshi > Quotes

“Ultimately, we will lose each other
to something. I would hope for grand
circumstance—death or disaster.
But it might not be that way at all.
It might be that you walk out
one morning after making love
to buy cigarettes, and never return,
or I fall in love with another …
It might be a slow drift into indifference.
Either way, we’ll have to learn
to bear the weight of the eventuality
that we will lose each other to something.
So why not begin now, while your head
rests like a perfect moon in my lap …?
Why not reach for the seam in this …
night and tear it, just a little, so the falling
can begin? Because later, when we cross
each other on the streets, and are forced
to look away, when we’ve thrown
the disregarded pieces of our togetherness
into bedroom drawers and the smell
of our bodies is disappearing like the sweet
decay of lilies—what will we call it,
when it’s no longer love?”
― Tishani Doshi

“With me and India it's all about leaving and returning. Madras is home. It's a very complicated relationship. When you are away too long you get homesick, and when you are there too long you are sick of home.”
― Tishani Doshi

“Six months of waiting. Six months of understanding the inner workings of faith and the outer spheres of the world. Six months of time: hundreds and millions of awakening seconds and sleeping minutes. Six months of aching stretched out like the Sahara: lickety-split, snippety-snip, jiggity-jig Six months of fading and blooming, stopping and starting. Six months of love: a breath, a deluge, an eternity; a single flake of snow.”
― Tishani Doshi, The Pleasure Seekers

“In truth
isn't it a waiting
that never ends

like the chasm between
the cycles of the world
Between separation

and union
longing and abandonment
And somewhere

between the waning
isn't this what
we're left with

the music
of uncertainty
the aftertaste of rain”
― Tishani Doshi

“But it is difficult to rewrite the story of your life, especially when you have been telling it one way for so long.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights

“Ode to Drowing"

If rain signals
the lover’s return
then I am lost

in the desert
burning
like the brain fever bird

looking for images of you
through mesquite
and teak

Because there’s no sign
of you
or what I know

to be as you
only clouds adrift
in a vanquished sky

like vines
of throbbing arms
and mouths

drinking at the shore
intoxicated
with the night”
― Tishani Doshi, Everything Begins Elsewhere

“How it is only ever through the will of nose,
bronchiole, trachea, lung,
that breath outpaces
any sadness
of tongue.”
― Tishani Doshi, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods

“Being is simple, being somebody is complicated.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights

“We talk about the past as if it were a country we could return to any time we wanted.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights

“The whole day feels threadbare and alone.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights

“Even the sea is lifeless - a sheet of metal suspended out of the sky's head like an exhausted grey tongue.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights

“Everywhere, shit and spit and jasmine and marigold. And somewhere in the distance, the sea.”
― Tishani Doshi, Small Days and Nights