Vidya Ashok

“When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not I while I slept?”
― Pablo Neruda

“Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks"

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.”
― Pablo Neruda, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

“A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“Why is it so hard, the sweetness of the heart of the cherry?

Is it because it must die or because it must carry on?”
― Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions