S Prakash

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Fathers and sons, probably one of the most emotionally deep, human relationships. Probably one of the most intense human equations. Words alone cannot describe what a father and son feel for each other, simply because there are such few words in this relationship. So much is left unsaid between the two of them. Communication, or rather a lack of it, always broadens the gap between the two of them. There’s always a gap between a father and son, always a gap between a name and a surname. I’ve always asked myself and today I address this question to all of you sons out there: Why did you stop hugging your father after a certain age? Why did you stop expressing, and being affectionate to your father after a certain age? Why is there this inexplicable awkwardness between a father and son? Why are all your emotions, your innermost thoughts, your tears, always reserved for your mother, your sister and then your wife? Why? Because you then become a father, and then you bottle up, just like your father did, and this vicious circle continues. Who is going to break this vicious circle? I realized, and I’m sure this applies to all of you as well, that, like everybody else, I too had issues, minor issues with my father, like every other son. You could call it a generation gap, you could call it a difference of opinion, you could call it anything. But what I also realized was that I was subconsciously being the man my father is. I was talking like him, feeling like him, loving like him—I was just being him. I then realized that a father not only gives his son his name, he also gives him his personality. So somewhere, if you have a problem with your father, you actually have a problem with yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve had this realization and this opportunity to express myself, and I wish with all my heart, that one day you do too. My father is my conscience, my father is my strength, my father is my support, my father is my hero. I don’t say it often enough to you, Dad, but what better than this global platform to say, I love you. I love you very, very, very much. And I wish I could love you as much as you love me, but I don’t think I’m capable of such unconditional love. I love you. You are my world. And then Amit uncle, who was there, said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think whatever needed to be said about Mr Yash Johar, his son Karan has very ably done.”
― Karan Johar, Unsuitable Boy

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley