Actually, we owe a great deal to those British officers and men and scholars who went deep into our literature, to translate the texts which the brah… - V. S. Naipaul

Not the first time. I didn’t think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don’t grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn’t exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here.” He touched his heart. “It isn’t there.” And he pointed at the dusty road. I

Whatever they say about going back to the beginning, they’ll be interested in the car.

I felt his pain as an extra pressure on myself. I mentally added his pain to mine, made it part of my own.