Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri -- Quotes
Mohan Gulrajani
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes
1. “Solitude: it's become my trade. As
it requires a certain discipline, it's a condition I try to perfect. And yet it
plagues me, it weighs on me in spite of my knowing it so well.”
2.
“There’s
no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season.
Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I
miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide.”
3.
“You,
who chafed at the collective we created, who only wanted to subtract yourself,
always, from the equation, throwing it off-balance.”
4.
“I
look for a place to sit and find a spot in the playground where they deal drugs
at night, but at this time of day it's bursting with kids, parents. dogs, also
a few people on their own like me. But today I don't feel slightly alone. i
hear the babble of people as they chatter , on and on. I'm amazed at our
impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves. tell stories to one another.
The simple sandwich I always get amazes me, too. As I eat it, as my body bakes
in the sun that pours down on my neighborhood, each bite, feeling sacred, reminds
me that I'm not forsaken.”
5.
“Solitude
demands a precise assessment of time, I’ve always understood this. It’s like
the money in your wallet: you have to know how much time you need to kill, how
much to spend before dinner, what’s left over before going to bed.”
6.
“Without
saying a word to each other we know that, if we chose to, we could venture into
something reckless, also pointless.”
7.
“The
city doesn't beckon or lend me a shoulder today. Maybe it knows I'm about to
leave. The sun's dull disk defeats me; the dense sky is the same one that will
carry me away. The vast and vaporous territory, lacking precise pathways, is
all that binds us together now. But it never preserves our tracks. The sky,
unlike the sea, never holds on to the people that pass through it. The sky
contains nothing of our spirit, it doesn't care. Always shifting, altering its
aspect from one moment to the next, it can't be defined.”
8.
“Today
when I wake up I stay put. I don’t go to the bathroom to weigh myself or to the
kitchen to drink a glass of tepid water before preparing the coffeepot. The
city doesn’t beckon or lend me a shoulder today. Maybe it knows I’m about to
leave.”
9. “In the pool I lose myself. My thoughts merge
and flow. Everything—my body, my heart, the universe—seems tolerable when I’m
protected by water and nothing touches me. All I think about is the effort.
Below my body there’s a restless play of dark and light projected onto the
bottom of the pool, that drifts away like smoke.”
Dr. Mohan Gulrajani
Gurugram - Haryana - 122009
Ph. 9818253979, 0124-437676