“He had never smoked but then had he ever loved? Life made him love and love made him smoke.”

“Love?' he asked himself, giving no sense of recognition for that word in the dictionary of his mind. It was the only battle he had lost in life, the only thing that had been snatched away from him, before he could even claim it.”

“Her fragrance blew him off and his body followed steps he had never learnt in his life.”

“Fate, they say, fate- the clay that molds the events of your life, and it was the same fate that had thrown the stone of her heart on the building of his expectations. But then wasn't it his fault that he had constructed the building of glass? Hadn't he failed to cement the bricks of his love with trust and colour them with security? There was no insurance for broken hearts, no ointment for wounded souls and there would never be one, he knew.”

“Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.”

“Not watching the path where his legs took him, he walked on because he knew he had to walk ahead, leaving his past behind.”

“He did not have anything on him except her thoughts, except the good times he had once shared and the bad times he so desperately wanted to forget.”