“Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of ‘Inside Outside’ to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“For feverish mornings after he left, she lay awake in that guest room in their house, in the rumples of the sheet he had slept in. She would get him on every turn: his aftershave lingering on the sides of the pillow that sometimes caught her, waking up from her dreams of him, in nuclear nights, his gaze: drenching her like water drops on burning rocks. She herself didn’t have any smell. He had to really lean in the first time to make out the attar amidst the freckles on her neck. And then there would be at least two, never only one: Jasmine and that other thing that he could never place- a smell that was between imitation pearls and the insides of a Durga Puja afternoon. On some days even in Simla, this she, would waft in by his collars nonchalantly.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“The last thing Farinoush did on several nights just before she went to bed was to rummage through her cardboard box of old things looking for him. And there he invariably remained, nestled forever between a copy of ‘Jana Aranya’ and ‘The Hours’. She read about thirty pages of his still incomprehensible stage-directions before passing out from exhaustion and hoping that the morning would bring him back to her; yearning to be yanked out of bed by him, devoured by him again. But he never returned.”

“She taught me how to wear a Tangail saree, she taught me Julius Caesar. She taught me how to deal with the pain of a broken heart.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“But think of me fondly right till the end. Think of me always as your brother's friend. Think of me whenever you see an Amrood tree. Think of me on cold winter nights.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

“That was our first home. Before I felt like an island in an ocean, before Calcutta, before everything that followed. You know it wasn’t a home at first but just a shell. Nothing ostentatious but just a rented two-room affair, an unneeded corridor that ran alongside them, second hand cane furniture, cheap crockery, two leaking faucets, a dysfunctional doorbell, and a flight of stairs that led to, but ended just before the roof (one of the many idiosyncrasies of the house), secured by a sixteen garrison lock, and a balcony into which a mango tree’s branch had strayed. The house was in a building at least a hundred years old and looked out on a street and a tenement block across it. The colony, if you were to call it a colony, had no name. The house itself was seedy, decrepit, as though a safe-keeper of secrets and scandals. It had many entries and exits and it was possible to get lost in it. And in a particularly inspired stroke of whimsy architectural genius, it was almost invisible from the main road like H.G. Wells’ ‘Magic Shop’. As a result, we had great difficulty when we had to explain our address to people back home. It went somewhat like this, ‘... take the second one from the main road….and then right after turning left from Dhakeshwari, you will see a bird shop (unspecific like that, for it had no name either)… walk straight in and take the stairs at the end to go to the first floor, that’s where we dwell… but don’t press the bell, knock… and don't walk too close to the cages unless you want bird-hickeys…’’('Left from Dhakeshwari')”