I kind of was shoveled onto a boat at 11 and went to England. I didn't have any parent watching over me. It was very free and may have been a bit of a scary time for me, but I really don't remember much about the voyage apart from playing ping-pong a lot with a couple friends.

He turns his back to the far shore and rows toward it. He can in this way travel away from, yet still see, his house....he feels he is riding a floating skeleton...Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible.

I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.

A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out

I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.

That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.

all this Beethoven and rain