2
" She died in hospital, eight months after she was diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes. For a week before that, she asked me to read aloud her favourite poems. She listened, her eyes closed. Now and then she repeated a line softly to herself. That fateful day, as I sat at her bedside, she asked me to read from a volume of Christina Rossetti’s poems. As I read, she opened her eyes, smiled and said, clearly and distinctly, ‘And if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget.’
Those were her last words. "
― Poile Sengupta , Inga
4
" You who have walked with me these seven steps, become my best companion, my dearest friend. We shall share the same gardens, the same sunlight, we shall cross the same threshold, we shall share the same hearth. We shall welcome the same days and the same shy nights. I shall be the sun, you shall be its light; I shall be the light, you shall be its brilliance. I shall be the moon, you shall be its silver. I shall be the earth, you shall be its patience. I shall be the waters, you shall be its sanctity. I shall be the sky, you shall be its stretch of stars, I shall be the wind, you shall be its centre, I shall be all the seasons, you shall be their promise. For you, I shall be the lampflame, you shall be my stillness. "
― Poile Sengupta , Inga
8
" These pages were once blank, they were my unprospected lands. Here, the streams and hillsides I would have traced, the pathways and streets I would have mapped, here, the pavilioned city I would have built, with its golden domes, its towering spires, its proud, fluttering flags. I will never build it now. "
― Poile Sengupta , Inga
9
" How does one wait for death? What does one do while waiting? Carry on the same daily tasks? Bathe, cook, eat? Bring the washing in when rain threatens? Read a book? Hold up a mirror to one’s face? Write a letter, a diary entry? Death provides no calendar, no timetable, no clock to consult. No doctor, no acclaimed astrologer can say when it might come calling. Whatever mankind may do to bring about method, order, regulation, and use the astounding logic of mathematics, death will not obey. Death is most ungovernable, unmethodical, unruly, unreasonable. Death mocks.
It jeers. "
― Poile Sengupta , Inga