Imagine, just for a moment, the rise and fall of your heartbeat. Feel tiny bubbles of thoughts making their way through the changing landscape of your consciousness. You’re uncertain about the time, the place, and the adventure you’ve chosen to be a part of. You remain unaware of the language that is being spoken and the lives being lived.
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How does one immerse oneself in such a world?
Undoubtedly, not by resisting or tearing down walls or sweeping the dust to make the picture clearer and clearer. To understand such love, in the form of a book, is to surrender to its first rays of light as the curtains are being pulled. There’s nothing left to do but give in to its rhythm, name it yours, and become one with the presence of it all. In the end, you’ll find yourself whole again - sitting in your own cave, rising and setting like the sun.
Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings by Ismat Chughtai felt a lot like the preceding passage. It was hard for me to write my thoughts on the book. Let alone review it because there are so many personalities to this book it’s hard to merge them as one. I’m glad I read this book now that I’m alive because it elucidates the deep connection between longing, desire, and heartache. And the choices we make to assert ourselves in life.
The book is done up in a detailed, gratifying, and erotic manner. With a sketch so profound and realistic in its making that one has nothing to do but feel deep empathy from a place where once there was none. It ignites the passion of Being and erases anything that challenges it. To read it is to force your senses to feel the fragility in strength. Because when you cry with a smile, you know you have traveled great lengths to become who you are.