Apur Sansar

• Fate
• Grief
• Winnowing

Fate

We don’t choose our parents, our places in the world, our bodies, only what we use them for. We can see ourselves as pawns in a game played by the gods, in which we are forced to marry strangers and can’t help falling in love.

Grief

A hole in the fabric of existence can shock, blind, alter, and injure so that one never fully heals from it. One thing that makes the young different is their parents haven’t died. The rest of us have a kind of PTSD.

Winnowing

Once it was all he lived for, but grief blows away inessentials like a winnowing fork. Apu hikes up the mountain and from his knapsack takes the pages of his novel and tosses them down the slope— white sheets falling above the pines.