The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator. - Jhumpa Lahiri

But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of his dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link. Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him. Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back

As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.

The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.