The Museum of Failures

There is no room for hope in the museum of failures. Even if it hangs on the walls for a moment, it usually comes crashing down.

Because the only way to destroy the museum of failures is to burn every shameful secret that it has ever held.

Why did human beings need to invent heaven and hell? Remy wondered. It was all here on Earth:

in India, dreaming could undo a man.

He now lived in a country riven by the same tribalism and hatreds that haunted lesser nations. He had always seen American democracy as a giant oak tree, with roots that went more than two hundred years deep. But it turned out the roots were shallow, held in place by custom and good manners, and all it took to lay them bare was one man who refused to play by the rules of civility and democracy.

Of course, there were unhappy people everywhere on earth, and if you catalogued all their griefs and disappointments, every place could be considered a museum of failures. One could argue that this was the universal human condition.

He needed to rearrange the kaleidoscope in his head,

He had often thought of Bombay as the museum of failures, an exhibit hall filled with thwarted dreams and broken promises.

Because, ultimately everybody's story was written in scars.

Write your own, beautiful story, emblazed with stardust.

This was what held the world together, this unsung army of silently suffering standing women.

eternal burden of the immigrant, the divided soul.

children believe that the world begins with their birth. But to be an adult was to acknowledge the endless circles of life that began before one’s time and would continue long after, to realize that one’s story was shaped and written by unknown others. His own history had begun so much earlier than his actual story began. Cyrus’s choices, made for reasons he wasn’t alive to defend or rationalize, had bled into his own. Remy looked around, and for a quick moment, he saw beyond the row of parked cars, the storefronts shuttered for the night, the dog raising its leg to pee on the tires of a parked scooter. Instead,

Choose wisely. Believe me, ninety percent of life’s happiness comes from selecting the right life partner.

This was how destiny was formed, Remy decided, not by what was written in the stars by some distant god, but by human choice and effort and courage. All he had to do was be brave.

The museum of failures had claimed its latest victim.

raison d’être, my reason for breathing.

By treating her son as less than human, they had diminished their own humanity.

Love itself was a mystery

city of duality and wild contradictions, of skyscraper and slum.

Of all natural phenomena, sunrise was the most predictable and yet, he believed, the most extraordinary. Dawn was the miracle that made every other miracle possible, but it was also the one that humans took most for granted. Millions of people literally slept through life’s greatest magic show.

...[i]t was always there, the sea, a silent witness to the human theater of this island city. Its omnipresence reminded Remy of his first visit to Seattle. He had gone for a run on a damp, foggy Sunday morning. But the fog had lifted as he ran, and at one point he'd turned around, and there behind him, squatting like the Buddha, like God himself, was Mount Rainier, in all its majestic, snowcapped glory. Remy had stopped, thunderstruck, feeling as if he were staring at the face of God. The fact that the mountain had been there all along, watching him from behind the curtain of the morning fog, had made its sudden appearance seem more mystical.

what was written in the stars by some distant god, but by human choice and effort and courage. All he had to do was be brave.

destiny was formed, Remy decided, not by

ninety percent of life’s happiness comes from selecting the right life partner.

live a large and robust life.

Nobody, nobody had loved Cyloo’s body as hard as the fire had.

broken pieces to organize themselves into a new reality. Up was down, and

he’d been groomed by his father to leave India,

Remy’s golden daylight. In other words, a perfect galaxy.