Jasmine Days

Some silences are more meaningful than thousands of long sentences.

Now you know the pain of losing someone beloved. So, can you imagine the fate of a woman who lost three of the most loved men in her life? he asked as we were parting.

The best way to express gratitude is to recognize the sorrows of other people.

It's best to be alone when you are sad. I wanted to be myself and feel my strength slowly seeping back into me.

I was travelling through a tunnel of light. The more I travelled, the lighter I felt. I was filled with a kind of ecstasy that I had never known before. I was moving closer and closer to the source of this beautiful light. All I wanted was to merge with that light. But suddenly I fell, like a flower falling off its stem, and returned to my body.

I didn't realize then that women like her walked on roads of embers. Their life was an endless wait for the husband kidnapped by the police, the missing brother, the son who had been imprisoned. Women who could not sleep because of the fire in their chest. Ali's mother was one of those women, battered by fate.

In the most trying moments of your life, do only that you know to be absolutely right. Thousands of people will approach you and offer thousands of opinions. Do not be influenced, do not give into temptations. Stand steadfast in truth. You will win.

All those other gestures of sympathy seemed a little melodramatic to me. My loss was mine and only mine. For the others, it was just a matter of words.

You know people, they will always find something or the other to talk about. Don't take it seriously. But remember that you are going through some of the most decisive moments of your life. You are bearing a burden that is much heavier than a woman as young as you should be bearing. But if you get through these days, you win. Do what feels infinitely right. There will be thousand naysayers. Don't be tempted. Be steadfast...

You know how it is when you arrive in a new place and feel like you don't belong there? That hesitation to recon with a new geography. That knowledge that this place is not mine, these ways of talking are not mine, these silences are not mine, this etiquette is not mine.So many new things to absorb. And the place also takes a little time to accept the new person. Often you have to meet the place on its own terms. Sometimes you have to work hard to earn your little corner in it. Till that place become yours, till you find your own equilibrium, there will be a gap between you and the place.

Honest is my policy. That's in fact my problem.