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We said nothing for some time but we couldn’t have been more eloquent.
Not to be able to touch that which I had already possessed would have been the subtlest form of torture.
I may stop loving you, Sushila, but I will never stop loving the days I loved you.
‘It wasn’t a smile you could see, it was a tender fleeting movement that came suddenly and was gone at the same time,
‘So your marriage is a success?’ ‘Of course it is, as a marriage. I am not happy and I do not love him, but neither am I so unhappy that I should hate him.
‘That sad word love,’ she said, and became pensive and silent.
A woman, I reasoned, would do anything for love provided it was not at the price of security; for a woman loves security as much as a man loves independence.
The sky there was bloodshot. The tall slim trunks of the eucalyptus tree were tinged with an orange glow; the rain had stopped, and the wind was a soft, sullen puff, drifting sadly through the trees. There was a steady drip of water from the eaves of the roof on to the window sill. Then the sun went down behind the old, old hills, and I remembered my own hills, far beyond these.
When the rain came, it was not with a preliminary patter or shower, but all at once, sweeping across the forest like a massive wall, and I could hear it in the trees long before it reached the house.
Then it came crashing down on the corrugated roof, and the hailstones hit the window panes with a hard metallic sound so that I thought the glass would break. The sound of thunder was like the booming of big guns and the lightning kept playing over the garden.
Unattainable, Sushila would always be more bewitching and beautiful than if she were mine.
There are no absolutes except birth and death.’
Unlike the adults, the children didn’t have to pretend.
The plainsman looks to the hills for the needs of his spirit but the hill man looks to the plains for a living.
‘Nothing is lucky if you put it away. If you want luck, you must put it to some use.’
That year the monsoon rains came early and Rakesh plodded to and from school in raincoat and gum boots. Ferns sprang from the trunks of trees, strange-looking lilies came up in the long grass, and even when it wasn’t raining the trees dripped and mist came curling up the valley.
Plod- move with heavy steps
But the birds liked them—especially the bigger birds, such as the bulbuls and scarlet minivets—and they flitted in and out of the foliage, feasting on the cherries.
Flit -move swiftly
but I was always like that, a glutton for the good things in life—birthday cakes, books and a comfortable bed,
Tucked away in a fold of the hills, its inhabitants had begun to resemble their surroundings: one old man resembled a willow bent by rain and wind; an elderly lady with her umbrella reminded me of a colourful mushroom,
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