Aastha

“Sometime I wonder if I’m impersonating him all the time. The day he died I took over. I sat in his chair, I wore his slippers, I fell into his favoured mannerisms. I lay curled up on his side as he did. I began believing everything he believed. I even took on his style of failure. It was though I wished his responsibility for all his omissions and pay the price he would, imagining that this might subtract the from the sum of his failure.”
― Neelum Saran Gour, Winter Companions and Other Stories

“My friend, RD, is alone, Israr Mian, and has no one remember him or write to him. I propose to remember him, even if Allah in his wisdom should send me immediate intimation of promotion and transfer.”
― Neelum Saran Gour, Winter Companions and Other Stories

“...in autobiography, as in all literature, what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me 'she goes on.' But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed