Latitudes of Longing Quotes

“What is the purpose of belief if even god can't put the world back the way you worshipped it ?”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Compared to all the glorious lives one can lead, the human one is quite a chore.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Standing alone in the face of infinity, it’s not your beliefs but what you have rejected that bothers you.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Ghosts do not live where they died. They return to the place where they felt the most alive. They have struggled, lived and enjoyed their time there so much, they cannot let go.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“you have loved him in many lives. Some spirits bridge the gap between different worlds through love. It keeps us all together.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“All of us are burdened by the twin destinies of saying goodbye to our loved ones and departing from our loved ones ourselves,’ he writes in a letter accompanying the gift. ‘Let this not obliterate the greater destiny we all share—the fleeting moments we have together.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Islands are mindless chatter in a meditative ocean.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Nostalgia, it seemed, was a being with short-term memory. It yearned for things that were quickly receding, but rarely for the distant past.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Hidden amongst the cluck and hiss, the croak and chatter outside the window, are songs of the extinct. The epic of evolution, told by bards long gone. Oh, to abandon the labyrinthine shell and shed old skin. To be naked and vulnerable. Free to swim, sprint and fly without inhibition. To vanish without a trace only to reappear as a mating call, the way the sun sets in the west and rises in the east … Can their stories and songs be heard by the living, they wonder. Do they acknowledge their legacy in the fossils?”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Disbelief, it turns out, is belief of its own kind. It is a river that flows against the overbearing currents of time and truth to make the opposite journey. It gathers all the mysteries of the ocean and returns them to their frozen origins. In the form of a glacier, it holds its head high up to look at god hiding behind the mists of heaven. What is the purpose of belief if even god can’t put the world back the way you worshipped it?”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“The best stories are the ones that are still to come... Close enough to hear, smell, and admire. Yet out of reach.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“We were strolling in the jungle that surrounds the Lilliputian volcanoes in the Middle Andamans. I found your mother stroking the trunk of a palm tree. It was a Corypha Macropoda in its final stages of life. Once it flowers, it dies. She asked me why it happened. It was how trees had evolved, I explained to her. Some had gone from producing hundreds of seeds with a diminished chance of survival to flowering only once but ensuring the seeds made it by giving them their best … Now I realize why she asked me that question. Your mother wanted me to know the answer. As a human being, I cannot look beyond life and death. But as a botanist, I see how limiting individual lifecycles can be to our understanding. Nature is a continuum. That is how it thrives.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Blessed are the ones who weep, for her salt flows in their tears. The ocean lives on in their tales as they wander in her ebb and flow…”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Water swept into the cracks, a trickle turned into a stream, streams turned into rivers. And then there was no turning back.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Apo had struggled to attain amnesia. The freedom to live, even the freedom to die, was linked to his ability to forget. But now that forgetfulness has set in as a natural process, it hurts him. Back then, amnesia was a deliberate act of hope. Now it is a sign of life unraveling.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Of what use are a dead man’s poems to this world?” the Poet asked.
“None. Which is why I can translate them freely.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“He witnessed water’s birth as ice, as he stood on one of Saturn’s moons, enraptured by the blizzards. He blinked with icy lashes as he saw the world through her eyes. Like a newborn who perceives it all as one being, she saw the stars and orbits as her limbs. He followed her journey to earth, couched in the ribs of a meteor. He saw her grow into the mightiest ocean the planet would ever see. Standing on the fringes of an atoll, he was hit by glassy waves, rhythmically drenching his calves, wetting his thighs and waist as he walked in deeper, until he was entirely submerged in her tale. She nurtured life in her womb, parasites committed to the blasphemy of evolution—a ceaseless separation, never to come together again.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Sitting in the garden, watching a hibiscus sun set over an emerald-green archipelago, leaves the couple unsettled. It forces them to swim in the solitary world of thoughts, preoccupations, and visions. Yet it doesn’t feel lonely.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Memory was life reflected in a shattered mirror. Ever since the Burman’s death, Mary had held on to him only in shards. Though the features were clear enough in her memory, she could never see the face in its entirety.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“That rains can turn into fossils, ones that can only be heard not seen, is an interesting thought. It is worth dreaming about.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“He banished all memories and, with them, the longing for a world that had gifted him those memories. He narrowed his willpower into a knife-edge, razor sharp and formidable. At knifepoint, he kept madness at bay.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“An old man crawls on the roof, risking the only thing he still has, his life, to feed himself. Below him live men much younger, listening to the radio, watching TV or sleeping. They’ve sold their wives and children. They can’t stand the heat with their shirts on,’ says Plato. ‘That’s the contrast. That’s what turns life into art.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“The most dangerous criminals are those who inspire others to commit crimes yet themselves stand back and watch,”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Only a fool would consider the shores of continents, sandbanks, and parched patches the ends to the unbroken surface of water. At best, they are breaks and pauses. Or mindless chatter. Islands are mindless chatter in a meditative ocean.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“What is it your friend Marx says? That philosophers can talk about the world in many ways but no one can change it?”
“No. He says that philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Disbelief, it turns out, is belief of its own kind.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Life is whispering in my ears with its irresistible melody, offering me the water of immortality
and the earth of transformation.
Far, very far, from the depths of the hollow sky, death is calling out to me in a simple, clear voice.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“In the clarity of isolation, he had stopped categorizing thoughts as friends or foes. What promised insanity also held the calm of enlightenment. He had suppressed all memories, longings, and aversions that would lead him astray in the maze of time, trapping him in the past or future.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“It isn’t a lack of courage that prevents him from reaching out to his wife but gratitude for this moment filled with longing and contentment. Chanda Devi leans over to tell him something, but her words are drowned out by the cacophony of birds. ‘My lady,’ he says, ‘you are competing with more than five thousand parrot residents of this isle. You must speak louder.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing

“Even after the flames peel the flesh away, Girija Prasad refused to believe what has happened. The porcelain-like piece of anklebone that refuses to be incinerated reminds him of her naked foot in the boat at Parrot Island. If anything, she is more alive than ever.”
― Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing