“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.”

“It was as if he had known her for a long, long time and before he knew her, he knew nothing because he felt he had not existed then, life had been absent in his breaths.”

“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.”

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

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

“An obstreperous urge seized him. he desperately wanted to hold on to her, to support his slipping heart, and when it slipped away, he realized she had gone away, incarcerating herself in his thought with her smile and unblemished innocence.”

“He got up slowly, not bothering to curse himself for forgetting the stop where he had to disembark. He was not used to leaving things behind; he wondered how the bus stop escaped.”