The Memory Remains

..."There was so much she could have achieved," he said. "I was never able to give her the opportunity."

I reached out to touch his arm but he shook my hand brusquely away; he was not the kind of man who takes kindly to expressions of sympathy; I could tell from his demeanour that he was accustomed to adversity and had invented many rules for dealing with it. The emotion he felt for his family he had rarely expressed; he had hoarded it inside himself, in the way a squirrel gathers food for the winter: loathe to spend it in his hectic middle years, he had put it away to be savoured when there was a greater sense of ease in his life, at a time when his battles were past and he could give his hoarded love his full attention. He had never dreamt — and who could? — that one bright December day, soon after dawn, it would be stolen, unsavoured, by the sea.

-Amitav Ghosh writing for The Hindu


Casually stumbled onto this piece today morning while reading the newspaper online.

And here we all are-so unaffected. I don't know why it makes me feel so lucky and miserable at the same time.