6 Quotes by Gurjinder Basran

Sometimes forgetting is the only thing that gets you through this life.

The past is always changed by the present. There is no true account, not even the number of years that have gone by. It’s what the years hide, reveal, and keep secret, what they tuck into days and minutes, what they fold and slip into dreams and nightmares – that is where the real living is.

I wrap myself in Mother’s cream pashmina and look in the mirror. She stares back. Resemblances run deep in our family. Ancestors lay claim and features are passed on like antiquities, every new life an ode to another.

Raj insisted she wasn’t leaving forever, that she was just choosing a university farther from home, but I knew there was no coming back. Every time she came home she was less as she was and more of who she was becoming.

I close my eyes and listen as they circle the living room, making polite offerings. The house is full and yet quiet; it’s as if my ear is pressed against a wall, listening for some great truth. As if we’re underwater, our lives submerged. I imagine the furniture dunking and bobbing, floating and sinking in the sea as we try to arrange it on the ocean floor, one hopeless piece at a time.

I pause as the clocks from Mother’s collection sound the hour. From every room come staggered chimes, cuckoos calling out. A moment later, the sound of ticking. The house a metronome. We are empty, as if our insides have been carved out. That is what death does, I think. It makes us into ticking clocks, in need of winding, hollow and mechanized.