Neha Gupta > Recent Status Updates

As he said this, he heaved a sigh of relief, grateful that he had finally unburdened himself. I looked at him with pity but chuckled inwardly, resisting the urge to laugh out loud. God would have too.

Always fidgety and nervous, with his round face suspended from his short and portly body like that of a Kuchipudi dancing doll, Fr Augustine’s demeanour forever perplexed me. Everyone else, however, including my own family, was smitten by him and described his reticent nature as the trait of a true servant of God.

I am enjoying the delicious lines from Bombay Balchao.. its a well written book but also it’s a mood!

It was as if they had emptied their jewellery boxes to flaunt their family wealth when the church always harped about frugality. The men who had come in three-piece hand-me-down suits that had long fallen out of favour with fashion, settled for their kerchiefs or made do with the faint warm air that passed their sides as their wives and daughters fanned their own faces.

The ladies saw this as the perfect occasion to bring out the cloth fans they had been desperately waiting to flaunt since after summer. Their eyes still wore the glint of envy as they observed with awe the handiwork of different tailors on other women. The richer among them had come in gowns embroidered with sequins and accessorised with rows of gold necklaces encrusted with coral or pearl.

This link on YouTube for the audiobook, it’s a home recording but helpful on walks to work.

London induced a feeling of evaporation, as if by no longer noticing the cold, she was becoming of the cold.

He used to think that conspiracy theories were the effect of a lack of democracy and transparency and a sense of helplessness in the face of the uncontrollable and inexplicable; if the political process was opaque the gaps were filled in by the imagination. Maybe religion was the first, the grandest of the conspiracy theories.

The kind stranger who warns them of an impending attack. The story was circulating after 9/11 in New York and again after the tube bombing in London. It’s a long standing urban legend which goes back atleast to the Second World War. There was no kindly person and no compassionate terrorist, only a collective craving to be comforted.