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21 " When the news of Prabhakaran’s death had broken, Raghavan had gotten drunk at home and wept complicated tears - for this comrades, for his estranged and cruel friend, for the vast toll of a campaign begun with mere black flags and Solignum graffiti, for the devastation of cause he still believed in, and for a fight that had somewhere gone very horribly wrong. "
― Samanth Subramanian , This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War
22 " Into its pinched streets, the fish-sellers told me, cars from Kolkata arrive daily, sent by government officials or corporate executives just to buy the best of the day's catch. The daily market is the town's centerpiece. For streets together, cereal-sellers sit surrounded by sacks of six or eight types of cereals; fisherwomen with toes reddened by fish blood squat behind cutters, little steel tubs of still-swimming catfish, and turmeric-smeared cuts of fish; on blue tarpaulins, vegetable-sellers arrange potatoes, gourds, red onions, beans both broad and French, big and little aubergines, pumpkins and huge heads of cabbage. "
― Samanth Subramanian , Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast
23 " The market consumes half of Kolaghat's day; after it closes, even though it is only mid-afternoon, a cloud of lethargy descends over the town, until the market reopens the next morning. "
24 " And as at every communal puja I have ever attended, there were the requisite distracted children, the whimpering baby, the sombre gentleman up front, and the comforting white noise of women talking and laughing at the back. "
25 " It provided a useful life lesson: anybody who asked you to trust them despite minor infractions was not to be trusted at all. "
26 " church "
27 " [describing the Mahavamsa, 6th-century chronicle of Sri Lanka]The king Yasalakatissa, who had come to his title by killing his older brother during a watersports festival, had a gatekeeper named Subha. Subha was the spitting image of the king, and so Tasalakatissa draped Subha in royal regalia and seated him on the throne. Whole the courtiers clustered around the impostor and sang his praises, Yasalakatissa, having dressed as a gatekeeper and stationed himself at the door, shook with laughter at the ingenuity of his jape.Then one day Subha addressed the ministers while the king was laughing, 'Why does this gatekeeper laugh in my presence?' He had King Yasalakatissa killed. Subha then reigned six years. Even when the truth was later discovered, he retained his throne and became known as King Subha. "
