Ashish Khetarpal

“And this love does not limit itself to show obliquely when the child is a girl. I remember a mother who fed her daughter with so much of her milk that her breasts sagged so that those of her daughter may grow with sophistication.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Give of your love but let not others take it from you.”
“What is this kind of love?”
“It’s like filling a river and not caring who drinks from it because when need be you’ll fill it again.”
“And what if I wish to drink from someone else’s river?”
“Nazanin-am, my sweetest, we’re all like small rivers and streams, starting at a higher plane from behind the mountains of our desires to be with somebody, and we start alone. A stream, a river, aspires to become something more, and so it must bend, not only its way as it cuts into the land, but also its stature. Only then can it hope to join something bigger, grander. But forget not, azizam, not all rivers reach the ocean. The venerable might of the Indus River–the cradle of our civilization and the catafalque of our neighbours–no longer carries itself to the ocean at the Port of Karachi; the river no longer feeds as it once used to, all because it has fed too many, for too long; it has run dry from overuse. It can no longer take in any more lovers. Before anything else, it must first fill itself again. There’s always some water lying at the depths of the driest land, in the earth’s mantle. This water must come to the surface. The philosophy of all life, as an old Red Indian said, starts with water.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“The pavement was my pandemonium, only I was not its Lucifer. I was not a fallen angel. Those who had only heard about me rumoured that my dreadful locks were of Ganges’ length, and my hands equally dirty; that I was somehow capable of curing alien maladies by diving in the patient’s eyes and grabbing the devil by the tail before tossing it out; and that once, I had bedded a gori who, since my sinister lovemaking to
her, had been falling constantly enceinte because I had viciously and designedly released such a large lump of sperm that had bunny-hugged her fallopian tube thereby causing her belly to be inflated as soon as it was deflated.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“I personally think that life has never put you to a real test. That’s why it seems so difficult. An easy life is more dangerous because it doesn’t make you question it. It becomes faithful to you. It tells you what you want to listen and only shows what you want to see. You may call it loyal but it’s like ordering a spaniel to sit when it’s already sitting, and then rejoicing in the effectiveness of your instruction. An easy life doesn’t
burn the coal, my friend.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories