Readers Cosmos

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”
― Christopher Paolini

“Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.
I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.
Take me to your vineyard.
Let me meet your mother.
Perfume me with basil water.
Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me,
imprison me in your name,
let love kill me.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“At eighteen, she already looks like a woman of sorrows and as her breaths start becoming shorter, tired of looking over her shoulder, she only wants to get away from this city where no one can fathom her love- boundless and profane and real, like her skin and her lips and the insides of her thighs. She knows she can smile, smell like the others. Her skin would bleed too if pricked and yet this reality does not belong to the ones sleeping on the platform floor; this reality is hers and her alone. Thus when she puts the mirror back, she rummages in her handbag, searching for that thing called identity: some of it lost somewhere in the railway colony she had just left behind, some in Sudhanshu’s left jacket pocket, the rest of it scattered here around broken teacups on railings, totally aberrant and arbitrary.”
― Kunal Sen

“In your rare embrace, sometimes I am lost nowadays. In these years, you have changed. I have changed. Every single day, we’re fighting our feuds silently; inventing devious ways to hurt one another. Our gazes keep to our feet: wavering, pirouetting and crisscrossing, so as to not stumble, even inadvertently, upon each other. Our windows look out at other windows looking in at us. Mynahs no longer come by in our balconies. Branches, not of a mango tree, but of a conglomerate, surround them instead. The silhouettes of concrete buildings sometimes shine in the rain's aftermath, but remain concrete. Today, as the Ganga rises and rages all over the city, people run for their lives, but I let it wash over my soul and flood my tears.’
('Left from Dhakeshwari')”
― Kunal Sen