Delhi is not far....

Delhi is not far by Ruskin Bond

"How evanescent those loves and friendships seem at this distance in time. I wonder what they are doing now, the people on whom these characters are modelled, if indeed they have survived. We move on, make new attachments. We grow old. But sometimes we hanker for the old friendships, the old loves. Sometimes I wish I was young again. Or that I could travel back in time and pick up the threads. Absent so long, I may have stopped loving you, friends; but I will never stop loving the days I loved you."

"Tagore wrote: 'Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.'"

"'I wonder why God ever bothered to make men, when he had the whole wide beautiful world to himself,' I said to Suraj one summer night. 'Why did he find it necessary to share it with others?'
'Perhaps he felt lonely,' said Suraj."

"A few things reassure me... The desire to love and be loved. The beauty and ugliness of the human body, the intricacy of its design. Sometimes I make love as a sort of exploration of all that is physical; and sometimes falling in love becomes an exploration of the mind. Love takes me to distant, happier places."

"Yesterday I was sad, and tomorrow I may be sad again, but today I know that I am happy. I want to live on and on, delighting like a pagan in all that is physical; and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart."