Abhijit Sengupta

“She died in hospital, eight months after she was diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. For a week before that, she asked me to read aloud her favourite poems. She listened, her eyes closed. Now and then she repeated a line softly to herself. That fateful day, as I sat at her bedside, she asked me to read from a volume of Christina Rossetti’s poems. As I read, she opened her eyes, smiled and said, clearly and distinctly, ‘And if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget.’
Those were her last words.”
― Poile Sengupta, Inga

“How does one wait for death? What does one do while waiting? Carry on the same daily tasks? Bathe, cook, eat? Bring the washing in when rain threatens? Read a book? Hold up a mirror to one’s face? Write a letter, a diary entry? Death provides no calendar, no timetable, no clock to consult. No doctor, no acclaimed astrologer can say when it might come calling. Whatever mankind may do to bring about method, order, regulation, and use the astounding logic of mathematics, death will not obey. Death is most ungovernable, unmethodical, unruly, unreasonable. Death mocks.
It jeers.”
― Poile Sengupta, Inga

“Nor will I ever find that walled garden where the hibiscus blows, with sweet musk roses and eglantine. Where stamens of rain fall on warm, white breasts.”
― Poile Sengupta, Inga

“Begat! What a satisfying word it is! It scorns. It despises. It spits. Summarily it dismisses all that bleating nonsense about love and romance, moonlight and motherhood.”
― Poile Sengupta, Inga