On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfamiliar trees into which East Pakistani refugees had fled, seeking safety over the Indian border.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

It is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

You remind me of everything that followed.