Quarterlife

by Devika Rege

But the point isn’t the meat; it isn’t about health or cruelty, but depriving herself to toughen something inside that is going soft.

‘Sounds exciting,’ Amanda says, and then, as women do when a conversation isn’t exciting enough, she gets personal. ‘Is that why you’re moving back?’

but the spotlight today is on Kedar, who makes no effort to disguise his lack of sophistication (to Naren’s distress), and worse, sports whatever is least impressive about him like a badge of honour.

if anything, it agitates him to see remnants of the past clutter the present, like the plastic bucket on the glossy Italian tiles, the ugly steel vessels in the French door fridge, or even old Kedar.

Until then, he must take pride in his present, for to suffer it in this way betrays not just your poor stock or choices but that you don’t stand by your stock and your choices. He presses his face to the towels, the blue detergent smell he has known all his childhood, and reminds himself: This is you, this is yours – love it, love it, love it!

Naren is starting to remind her of her Boston cousins of whom Mom once said that if their manners were perfect, it was not because they found it essential to be kind, but because they did not wish to appear crass.

Is his interest in art less about what he sees in the painting than what he wants to see in the mirror?

What is the culture of a place or people other than this – how we lived and how we died?

self-hatred is a form of narcissism.