Wednesday, January 27, 2010

are we? are we not...

They were falling back into familiarity,into common ground,into the dirty gray.Just ordinary humans in ordinary opaque boiled-egg light,without grace,without revelation,composite of contradictions,easy principles,arguing about what they half believed in or even what they didn't believe at all,desiring comfort as much as austerity,authenticity as much as playacting,desiring coziness of family as much as to abandon it forever.Cheese and chocolate they wanted,but also to kick all these bloody foreign things out.A wild daring love to bicycle them to sky,but also a rice and dal love blessed by unexciting feel of everyday,its surprises safely enmeshed in something solidly familiar like marrying the daughter or son of your father's best friend and grumbling about the cost of potatoes,the cost of onions.Every single contradiction history or opportunity might make available to them,every contradiction they were heir to,they desired.but only as much,of course,as they desired purity and lack of contradiction.
(extract from the inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai)

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