#devika rege

Is she a monster for falling out of love with a good man? And is he all that good, and was it ever love?

Quarterlife: A Novel by Devika Rege (Divya reads Asia #6)

O Bappa, he thinks, his grip tightening on the window frame, Bappa, I believe every word I speak, but there are nights when I have no religion and no politics, I have only desires.

For Gyaan, this is a disagreement he can referee. For her, this is a crisis. She breathes over her frustration that her partner of two years can’t comprehend the source or depth of her despair as he convinces himself that he is a better man than Naren. But the conversation at the Agashes has betrayed their limits as a couple; it has brought her to the irrevocable knowledge that their frames of reference differ in fundamental ways. For a moment, she feels a cold, pure hatred for Gyaan. It soothes him to set her down safe when she is angry, to play caretaker and pacifist. She will not give him that satisfaction.

The only images of real value, she thinks, are the rejects – outtakes overwhelmed by the sun or blurred by dust, cropped edges with chaotic lines and broken faces – for the only honest composition inspired by such rupture is one that fails.

Maybe it’s the natural progression of any kind of love. You get so carried away at the thought of total acceptance … you think if there’s been no limit so far, there is none, so you are freer and freer until it socks you in the face: the point beyond which to be entirely true to yourself is to give up any hope of being loved. It is our excitement at the things we have in common and our faith that we’re equal stakeholders which warps our judgement when we go in, and by the time we get out, the unbearable thought that the role of cultural difference is overstated, and that I might be uniquely insufferable.