Status Updates From A Passage to India

Forester you genius

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they built are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble (…). She calls ‘Come’ through her hundred mouths (…) But come to what? (…). She is not a promise, only an appeal.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.