Aastha

“...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

“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

“I am like that poet, Veeran, who still prefers the power to gift away cities in his raggedness than to make a gift of himself to cities though they dress him in gold.

Lucknow is dear to me, though now an altered city. Partition has emptied my chamber of poets but I stay on in an unaltered space.”
― 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