Kaustubh Dudhane > Recent Status Updates

Britt-Marie’s rugs and Britt-Marie’s memories have a lot in common in that sense: they are both very difficult to wash. 💔

The girl offers her two tiny disposable cartons of the sort of milk that doesn’t have to be kept in the fridge. Then she holds out a plastic mug with plastic teaspoons protruding from it. Britt-Marie could not have looked more startled if she’d been offered roadkill. 😂

“You are not how I imagined you would be.”

“I understand, lieutenant,” Agnes responded, wiping away tears with the back of her free hand. “I am not how I imagined myself to be either.”

It was almost too easy to find female spies. Just educate their children.

One was flipping over the pages of Kings and Queens I Wanted to Punch in the Throat by famous traveller, Nar Ad Muni, which despite its sour touch was a good reference book on the lineages of the Kings of the Union. 😂

Humility is nothing but artfully disguised arrogance.

Die in a mock battle today, live to become a legend tomorrow.

The old man regarded them as one: pitiable human beings, fumbling through this world, in possession of nothing but their ephemeral hopes, minds clinging to half-true philosophies and outright falsehoods.

Now she could have real food, not just rice and lentils laced with drugs. Her mouth watered at the thought of food in its many incarnations. Of crisp purple aubergines, of milky-fleshed nuts, of fish curries, of ladyfingers flavoured with tamarind and coriander. Hunger growled inside her like a prowling animal.

For a Hero of Light, he reckoned he cast a rather grim shadow. Hero. The word slithered nastily in his mind. An honour bestowed upon you when you had killed all those who would have called you a mass murderer.

Writing after his death, one eminent correspondent suggested that Packer mirrored Oscar Wilde's definition of the cynic: 'A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.' He knew the price all right, but the thing about Packer was that he knew the value too. Cricketers have been thanking him ever since. And those who haven't, should.

Where Lillee had menace, Procter had venom; where Lillee had side-on outswing, Procter had chest-on inswing.

Try as he might, he was unable to dispel the notion that by passing through this point it would be as though they were serving themselves up as a meal; that they were allowing themselves to be swallowed whole.

Auric sensed a man trying on a garment of humility that did not fit him well.

“You take too much on yourself, Lenda,” said Auric, unaware of his mistake.

Sira looked up at him, sleepy-eyed, smiling. “We all assume burdens that come our way, friend Auric, no matter how ancient they may be. Whether or not they are truly ours to bear."

As Kerry Packer famously said to Justin Langer, 'Son, if we hadn't invented helmets, you'd be dead.' 😂

Auric smiled, touched by her concern. “I’ll be riding Glutton,” he responded. “That great beast frightens both squirrels and petty bandits, when viewed from the right angle at least.”

'Some people love their children more than they love their partner,' says Ibrahim, 'and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit either thing.'

That's who we are as human beings. For the most part, we are kind.

I asked Elizabeth what favour Joanna owed us and she said the universal guilt of a child who doesn't see their mum often enough. She had Joanna pegged there too. 😂

It's the little things, I expect. Little treasures we find without knowing their origins. And they come when we least expect them. It's beautiful, when you think about it. 🥺

A herd of charging, heavily pregnant rhinoceroses would have been quieter than the children were at that moment.

Instead, he lay awake, thinking of the way Arthur's hand had felt on his, the way they'd fit together. It was foolish, and most likely dangerous, but in the quiet darkness, there was no one who could take it away from him.

Sometimes, things get chipped and broken, but there's still good in them.

Calliope, a thing of evil, sat on the edge of his bed, black tail twitching as she watched him with bright green eyes. She started purring. In most cats, it would be a soothing sound. In Calliope, it indicated devious plotting involving nefarious deeds. 😂

At first my role was to provide Web ingenuity to help the colonists do what they do best – destroy truly indigenous life. 😥

There were strict laws protecting card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

‘Look,’ said Tyrena. ‘In twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.’

But even in our self-deception, we become gods.