The top twenty-five quotations from Sabarna Roy’s literary works

Sabarna Roy is an Indian author of six literary masterpieces. They have been critically acclaimed in India and internationally. His books are titled: Pentacles; Frosted Glass; Winter Poems; Abyss; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018, and Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

He is presently writing a book on the pandemic.

Sabarna has a strange individualistic style of writing a narrative that is a strange cocktail of: realism, magic realism, surrealism, and stream-of-consciousness. Every narrative is like sailing through a cloud.

For the readers, we present below the top twenty-five quotations from his literary works; hope you enjoy them:

1. Loneliness is like smoke. It starts from a definite point and ends up everywhere indefinitely. It eats up the soul, actually chews it to miniscule shreds, from inside and out. – New Life; Pentacles.

2. I believe love is not embedded in duty, responsibility, cause and reason. It is a rage of wind that uproots you from the present, makes your past irrelevant to you and obliterates the significance of a future. Love is happy death. – New Life; Pentacles.

3. If we can see our fate in a face, we will chase it till death, not thinking about the consequences of such a chase. Otherwise we will lack adequate courage and even the wherewithal to continue this chase. It will be a rare occasion when two persons see each other’s fate in their faces. – New Life; Pentacles.

4. The tower stands erect like the timeless portal of an arrogant crown.

As I walk up its spinal stairwell at nights,

Pondering over this multitude of dreams, I know,

These are dreams which still linger in its labyrinths like ghosts.

– The Tower; Pentacles.

5. I can tell you: There are two kinds of beauties on this planet,

One, who lose their beauty to age, and another, who ripen with time.

– Tara; Pentacles.

6. A question leapt into his mind: Is it possible to achieve true happiness by living a solitary life or is it important to lead a community life where one instinctively believes that one’s own desires are insignificant compared to the desires of others and one works towards fulfilment of their desires as if they are one’s own? – The Last Plunge; Frosted Glass.

7. Was somebody monitoring his actions closely, like a television journalist? Had he been declared a dangerous entity for society and the world at large? In what manner would he be punished for the offence he had committed? Would he be caught and paraded while cameras and flash bulbs clicked and triggered on his face? Would he be declared a criminal? – The Prank; Frosted Glass.

8. Leila wanted to tell Rahul that whenever she crossed the Pacific she requested a window seat so that she could look down at the ocean for, in some strange way, it reminded her of Rahul’s eyes. – Fallen Man; Frosted Glass.

9. The girl with pearls in her eyes

Dived into the crater of a fuming mountain

In search of luminous stones and

An isle that was edged with trees of fire

– Love; Frosted Glass.

10. I went to the bookcase

The books were gone

Those were books collected day by day

Those were books of suffering and pain

Those were books shared with lovers of various races and times

– Face and the Bookcase; Frosted Glass.

11. She wonders if she would have to look up to Dipyaman for setting Rituraj up in his life. And that is an opportunity Dipyaman is waiting for silently for buying out Mridula’s independence forever in life. – Mridula and Rituraj; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012-2018.

12. Before he breathed his last on account of sudden and heavy myocardial infarction, he was in fact dreaming of his wife, his children, his parents celebrating his forty-fifth birthday at the Zen restaurant of Hotel Park over Riesling and an elaborate pan-Asian cuisine, and a cricket match he had played with his colleagues of earlier years within the confines of Park Street cemetery in 1993. – A Letter from Mrinalini Dutta Gupta; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012-2018.

13. One of the key challenges in art is to capture the unpredictability of life without creating too many made-up coincidences – Rumbling-1; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012-2018.

14. I love the silence and darkness of cinema halls. But, when I see youth floating in the galleries, I know, I will never be like them anymore. I have lost my time. I will never get back my time. Sometimes these thoughts sadden me; sometimes they make me violent. – Incomplete Conversation Set-pieces; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012-2018.

15. Man’s consciousness and the wild nature were contrarily posed against each other at the birth of civilization … man has created many kinds of shelters, some of them very luxurious … but a shelter is not home … a family is not home … an institution is not home … being at home is an idea, an undying dream deeply ingrained in man’s consciousness against which he involuntarily compares his environment all the time! – Niharanjan Babu; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012-2018.

16. I had entered this jungle in search of an everlasting fire

That brought back the dead to life

Whereas

I only witnessed millions of

Fireflies and stars intermittently lighting up the dead hanging in the air.

            – Winter Poems.

17. Before I passed out and became sediment of ashes I saw a dream of billion coffins made of trees, metal and hydrocarbon fibres carrying unbundled skeletons of men, women, children and babies ballooning up in a smoke-filled sky. – Winter Poems.

18. He had told me once: You will not be able to penetrate your life ever – separate your effort from chance over matters of consequence; you will not be sure of your memories; you will not know who you are or who you are not– Winter Poems.

19. They forgot the charm of cotton ball plugs, the sight of wetted white petals of fecund flowers, the absent-minded twirl of smoke chains, incense sticks, the sonorous trail of holy hymns, crackling sounds of earthen pots and above all, the communal mourning around a corpse – Winter Poems.

20. Yes, this was where we argued:

Where is home?

       What is home?

       Whether home is only an idea – an imagination – of man?

       How far are we from our home?

       Is this our home – an endless vault of space – unable to connect to our past and future?

– Winter Poems.

21. Sandy explored the marine world – star fishes, octopuses, jelly fishes, eels, sea-horses, corals and gold fishes – while I wanted to stick to my dungeon – Duality; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

22. Like all classics, Lolita presents before us a very amorphous reality that shows us extremes in which human life exists. – Duality; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

23. In life, there are certain things that are within our control, and a lot many things that are beyond our control. The aggregate of determinate and indeterminate factors makes life indeterminate. Uncertainty is closely associated with indeterminateness as indeterminate problems are likely to have multiple solutions. – Duality; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

24. The sweet rush of death

The sounds of cymbals and drums

The roaring sounds of youth all over

– Winter Poems 2020; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

25. A strange light in my trench – a concoction of the

night’s darkness

And, the light glowing and melting out of the

innumerable flowers of mustard

– Winter Poems 2020; Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.

 

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