indie’s Reviews > Running in the Family > Status Update

"Sanskrit was governed by verticals, but its sharp grid features were not possible in Ceylon. Here the Ola leaves which people wrote on were too brittle. A straight line would cut apart the leaf and so a curling alphabet was derived from its Indian cousin. Moon coconut. The bones of a lover’s spine."

"This island was a paradise to be sacked. Every conceivable thing was collected and shipped back to Europe: cardamons, pepper, silk, ginger, sandalwood, mustard oil, palmyra root, tamarind, wild indigo, deers’ horns, elephant tusks, hog lard, calamander, coral, seven kinds of cinnamon, pearl and cochineal. A perfumed sea. And if this was paradise, it had a darker side."

"When ships were still approaching, ten miles out at sea, captains would spill cinnamon onto the deck and invite passengers on board *to smell Ceylon* before the island even came into view."

"Heat walks across the house as an animal hugging everybody."

"It is delicious heat. Sweat runs with its own tangible life down a body as if a giant egg has been broken onto our shoulders."

"my watch collecting sea under the glass and gleaming with underwater phosphorus by my bed at night."

"Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides. It was almost impossible for a couple to do anything without rumour leaving their shoulders like a flock of messenger pigeons."

"Truth disappears with history and gossip tells us in the end nothing of personal relationships. There are stones of elopements, unrequited love, family feuds, and exhausting vendettas, which everyone was drawn into, had to be involved with. But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other’s presence."

"Love affairs rainbowed over marriages and lasted forever—so it often seemed that marriage was the greater infidelity."