But Tilo had crept up on him, and become a kind of compulsion, an addiction almost. Addiction has its own mnemonics skin, smell, the length of the loved ones fingers. In Tilos case it was the slant of her eyes, the shape of her mouth, the almost invisible scar that slightly altered the symmetry of her lips and made her look defiant even when she did not mean to, the way her nostrils flared, announcing her displeasure even before her eyes did. The way she held her shoulders. The way she sat on the pot stark naked and smoked cigarettes. So many years of marriage, the fact that she was not young any more and did nothing to pretend otherwise didnt change the way he felt. Because it had to do with more than all that. It was the haughtiness (despite the question mark over her stock, as his mother had not hesitated to put it). It had to do with the way she lived, in the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and seemed to have no consulates.
About This Quote
About Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy was a contemporary Indian author and activist. Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Love — Quotes exploring romantic love, compassion, and human connection