You Are Still Young, Free.. Do Yourself

On A Sticky August Evening Two Weeks Before Her Due Date, Ashima Ganguli Stands In The Kitchen Of A Central Square Apartment, Combining Rice Krispies And Planters Peanuts And Chopped Red Onion In Bowl.

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.

War Will Bring The Revolution; Revolution Will Stop The War.

In Fiction, Plenty Do The Job Of Conveying Information, Rousing Suspense, Painting Characters, Enabling Them To Speak. But Only Certain Sentences Breathe And Shift About, Like Live Matter In Soil.

Isolation Offered Its Own Form Of Companionship: The Reliable Silence Of Her Rooms, The Steadfast Tranquility Of The Evenings. The Promise That She Would Find Things Where She Put Them, That There Would Be No Interruption, No Surprise. It Greeted Her At The End Of Each Day And Lay Still With Her At Night.