The Mountain Shadow

The choices we make are branches in the tree of possibility. For three monsoons after that day, Vikram and the strangers in that room were new branches in a forest we shared for a while: an urban woodland of love, death and resurrection.

Ref. 9FD3-A

The past, beloved enemy, has bad timing. Those Bombay days come back to me so vividly and suddenly that sometimes I’m shaken from the hour I’m in, and lost to the task. A smile, a song, and I’m back there, sleeping sunny mornings away, riding a motorcycle on a mountain road, or tied and beaten and begging Fate for an even break. And I love every minute of it, every minute of friend or foe, of flight and forgiveness: every minute of life. But the past has a way of taking you to the right place at the wrong time, and that can be a storm inside

Ref. AA39-B

And while a small measure of bitterness might’ve protected me from time to time, as it sometimes does, I’ve learned that sweet memories don’t walk through cynical doors. And I love my memories, even when they have bad timing: remembered minutes of sunlight staking out patches on tree-lined Bombay streets, of fearless girls flashing through traffic on scooters, of handcart pullers straining under the load but smiling, and those first memories of a young Indian-Irish detective named Naveen Adair.

Ref. C02B-C

He was authentic. He expressed the uniqueness when what we are, is what we’re free to become. I’d known him through lost loves, alarming lust, and kneeling epiphanies, his and mine. And I’d spent enough of those long, lonely wolf nights with him to love him.

Ref. 5409-D

Many men have already fallen to their knees before that young life. It is not a good thing, in a man so young, to see so much submission. There is a lot of blood behind that charming young smile.’

Ref. FDBF-E

But there are some people, some loves, that worry every goodbye, and leaving them is like leaving the country of your birth.

Ref. 3B6F-F

What dream, what hope, what despair drives us to the things we do, just to desert us when the deed is done? What hollow things are they, motive and reason, born at night to fade so quickly in the sunlight of consequence? What we do in life lives on inside us, long after ambition and fear lie frosted and opaqued on forgotten shores. What we do in life, more than what we think or say, is what we are.

Ref. 6D9A-G

turned away, watching the traffic shuffle beside the bullying shoulder of a bus. Didier and Abdullah: men so different, and yet brothers, in so many ways. I thought of the things we three unwise men had done, together and alone, since we’d met as exiles in the Island City. There were things we regretted, and things buried. But there were also things of triumph, and light. When love cut one of us, the others cauterised with sarcasm. When one had to become two, the others brought their guns. When hope faltered in one, the others filled the hollowness with loyalty. And I felt that loyalty like a hand on my chest, as I looked back at them, and I hoped hard for them, and for myself.

Ref. A497-H

The past is a novel, written by Fate, weaving the same themes: love and its glory, hate and its prisoners, the soul and its price. Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it’s our will alone that leads us to one or the other.

Ref. 6617-I

could’ve ridden away without a word. I did it every day: rode past sadness, neglect and futility. You can’t jump through every hoop that Fate puts in front of you.

Ref. 9FC0-J

What are you, a psychiatrist now, answering a question with a question?’

Ref. 8EB4-K

She met my eyes for a moment, and then threw her glance away again.

Ref. FA16-L

The rapture, born in seconds, is a frail thing. And when rapture dies, no power can restore it to a lover’s eye. Lisa and I were staring at one another from a deeper place: the place where rapture lands when it falls.

Ref. AEBE-M

Faith. Faith is in everything, in every minute of life, even in sleep. Faith in Mother, sister, brother, or friend: faith that others will stop at the red light, faith in the pilot of the plane and the engineers who signed it into the air, faith in the teachers who guard children for hours every day, faith in cops and firemen and your mechanic, and faith that love will still be waiting for you when you return home.

Ref. 8AD5-N

I’d been staring into a splintered mirror, and it was a while since I’d faced alone. I was walking away from a small army, pledged to defend me as a brother in arms. I was losing quasi-immunity from the law, protected by quasi-ethical Company lawyers, just a billable minute away from quasi-ethical judges.

Ref. 5F71-O

are the art, that sees us as art.’

Ref. BE4E-P

dying for nothing!’ she parried, her forefinger on my chest.

Ref. 7065-Q

The truth comes in two kinds,’ she laughed gently. ‘The one you want to hear, and the one you should

Ref. 5D8C-R

‘Happiness has a sign on it,’ she said. ‘It says Do Not Disturb, but everybody does.’

Ref. 732E-S

‘Interfering is what we do,’ I insisted, ‘if we care about someone. Weren’t you interfering, when you ripped some skin off me just now?’

Ref. 910D-T

If Khaled looks at what he has through your eyes, instead of his own eyes, he may believe in himself less than he does now. And I need him to be strong.’

Ref. F0EE-U

‘This will be bad, before it is good, Lin. It is not a joke. Please know that I value your silence very highly, the silence of friendship, because I know that you are risking your life, should Sanjay come to know of it. Be prepared for war, the more so if you despise war.’

Ref. 99D7-V

Let’s stop all this serious talk, yaar. We all have things in the past that we regret, no? We have a saying, in Arabic. Take counsel from he who makes you weep, not from he who makes you laugh. I haven’t made you laugh today, Lin, but that doesn’t mean my counsel is worthless.’

Ref. E914-W

Faith is belief without fear, and freedom is one of faith’s perfections. Standing there on that smothered deck, listening to prayers in Arabic, Hindi, English, Sinhalese and Tamil, the stars so bright those tiny suns burned my eyes, I put my faith in freedom, and asked Mehmu for my gun.

Ref. C3F2-X

The only beauty the past has is that it can’t be changed. There was nothing you could’ve done, and there’s nothing you can do now.’

Ref. C9D0-Y

Everything leaves a mark. Every blow echoes in the forest inside. Every injustice cuts a branch, and every loss is a fallen tree. The beautiful courage of us, the hope that defines our kind, is that we go on, no matter how much life wounds us. We walk. We face the sea and the wind and the salted truth of death, and we go on.

Ref. 4053-Z

The Big Questions only have small answers, and the Big Answers can only be found through small questions. But first, we need a little R and R.’

Ref. 664C-A

Regret is a ghost of love. Regret is a nicer self that we send into the past from time to time, even though we know it’s too late to change what we said, or did. We do it because it’s human: a thing of our kind. We do it because we care, drawn by threads of shame that only fray and wither in the sea of regret.

Ref. 4C78-B

Knowledge isn’t knowledge, until the truth of it is self-evident in the sharing. Again.’

Ref. 80A0-C

Okay, in a world where apples fall from trees, it’s sufficient evolutionary knowledge to step out of the way from falling apples, or to catch one, or pick one up off the ground and eat it. All the other stuff we know, like the rate at which it falls, and the calculations that allow us to land a craft on Mars, is non-evolutionary. Not required, for evolutionary purposes. So, why do we have it? And what’s it for? Is that a fair summary?’

Ref. BD28-D

went on with my war dance for the dead, and the banging stopped, and the drumming in the music thumped me around the room, and I could write again.

Ref. 0984-E

knew a good cop, who needed the money. Corruption is a tax imposed on any society that doesn’t pay people enough to repel it themselves. His story, at roadblocks, was that I was a translator, a volunteer, who was warning tourists to stay off the streets at night.

Ref. 8F2B-F

It was too much, it was every dream. Doubt, the thing that fights love, pushed me to the cliff, daring me to jump. I jumped.

Ref. 81E2-G