39 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2023
    1. He asked how I was doing, and when, as usual, I just said,“Fine,” he wouldn’t let me get away with it.“No,” he said. “You’re not fine, Viji.”I said nothing.

      mom asks me how school was and this is always how it plays out

    2. “I don’t mind if you have no faith in religion, Viji. Just as longas you have faith in the goodness within yourself.

      my mother told me this berfore aswell

    3. I’m not mean about any one religion,” I said. “They’re allequally silly.

      i agree

    4. Soon, I’d setthe whole place yawning.

      this same thing happens when augusto shouts "BREEEK"

    5. Celina Aunty called me into the schoolroom andmotioned me toward one of the empty desks.“Sit,” she ordered. “Write.”“Write?” I said. “Why?”

      right when i was going to sleep my mother made me write and practice to pass a test

    6. I tried a few times but kept choking up, unable to get beyondthe first sentences.

      when i get exited or sad the same happens to me

    7. hen I saw him—scrubbed clean by a nurse, with his hair cutshort and washed and brushed—I could hardly believe it wasMuthu.

      when i take a bath i look 10x prettier aswell

    8. Muthu lay in beds near one another. You were each hooked upto a contraption that dripped medicine and food and water into yourveins,

      my cousin has once been in this situation

    9. “Did you use mosquitonets?” “Did you boil the water before you drank it?” “Whatmedication did you try to give her?”

      doctors ask the exact same questions to my mother when i go to a hospital

    10. “Rich boys, for sure,” Arul said. “You have to be rich to wastetime going on escapades at night instead of catching up on precioussleep

      i do homework in the middle of the night

    11. Arul placed his candle beside the others. You watched asintently as when you made your bead necklaces.

      ive done this before

    12. As we walked away, you and Muthu started playing a game,tossing a bit of concrete into the air like a ball and trying to catch itagain before it fell.

      i do this with a tenis ball and i catch it with a punch to practice

    13. The drone of bloodthirsty mosquitoes had wokenme several times during the night, and my arms itched with bites.

      This was a huge problem for me when i didnt have a ventilator, i would have to sleep in the couch but sometimes they followed

    14. My voice came out all panicky. I had avision of a ghost swallowing you whole.

      i had a dream i was escaping a ghost

    15. But I cared. I cared about him as strongly as if we’d known eachother all our lives. I couldn’t imagine our future without him andMuthu in it.

      i also met a girl in 5th grade which i loved, and i cared about her like i met her my whole life, but she left...

    16. But my dad was the best fisherman in our village.

      my father is also a good fisherman

    17. I felt too excited to sleep, so I sneaked out to join him.

      this happened once in a sleepover

    18. “Don’t you ever think about the future?” I challenged him.“No,” Muthu said. “There’s enough to worry about every daywithout worrying about tomorrow.”

      seems like the procrastinator version of me

    19. You set it free, Rukku,” I cut him short. “Now it can goanywhere it feels like. That was really nice of you.”

      i once did that because i thought it would go to space and find aliens

    20. “You really never pray?” Arul looked horrified. “Even the wrongGods are better than no God.”

      heard that before

    21. It sounded like our father, O. R. T. Narayan,something something—all in English, not Tamil like Amma’sprayers.

      i recognize this prayer and i used to preach it in the USA

    22. “Give me something,” she whined. “I have to look after mybrother. See him?” She gestured at a small boy—stark naked—whowas sleeping behind her.

      this situation happened to my family when we went to egypt

    23. She sat with you, showing you ways to tie pretty knots and braidstrands together.

      i tried to learn that when i was in a school on the USA

    24. “No banana?”“No, sorry.”“Papaya?” you suggested.“No.”“Guava?”“No. No pomegranate, no jackfruit, no oranges, no sapotes, nosweet limes. No nothing.”

      seems like my fridge

    25. “Want to come for a swim?” Muthu grinned at you. “The water’snice and cool.”

      i like swimming

    26. I couldn’t help petting him. His coat was smooth. He wiggledand sniffed my hand.

      same, cant help petting my dog no matter what

    27. “Get away from that puppy, Rukku. It might bite.”

      My dog loves to bite

    28. Homesicknesspinched my heart for a moment. I thought of the rare weekendswhen Appa was away and Amma had enough energy to join us so wecould cook a meal together.

      how i felt when going to the nr

    29. The smell of roasting chillis tickled my nose

      the smell of crabs makes me feel that way

    30. The conductor looked at me and then at you, and stuck a handin his pocket and pulled out a hard green sweet that had melted outof shape.

      i have been to ubers that have this function

    31. he set packages wrapped in newspaper onthe cracked kitchen counter. “Presents for my girls.”

      My father also gave me a wrapped present once

    32. We’d just finished our dinner when we heard Appa’s heavyfootsteps. The sound of him staggering up the stairs to ourapartment told us all we needed to know.

      This situation is similar, when my father arrives his footsteps are heavy so i know he arrived.

  2. Apr 2023
  3. Oct 2022
    1. [T.S.] Eliot stood—as he once famously said of himself—for conservatism in politics, classicism in literature, and Catholicism, or rather Anglo-Catholicism, in religion. He looked back into the past, the mediaeval past, as a confirmed laudator temporis acti and in the mediaeval past he looked back not only to John Donne among the metaphysical poets, nor only to William Shakespeare among the Elizabethan dramatists, but before them to the great Dante among Italian poets and behind Dante, though not so obviously, to St. Thomas Aquinas among the scholastic theologians. (From "T.S. Eliot's Metaphysics" by Peter Milward, Culture and Civilization 2009.)
  4. Jun 2022
  5. Jul 2021
  6. Sep 2018
  7. Sep 2016
  8. Jun 2016