She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain – Louisa May Alcott
The first time I ever felt accepted and loved was on the top of a tree, on a cloud when Moonface and his friends went to the land of nursery rhymes to save a friend stuck with Little Miss Muffet. The time I understood the implicit incompatibility of needs and priorities was at Malory towers. I ran away from my difficulties in school as the sixth one of the famous five to help solve a case of the missing dog. So brave! I got over my ego-centrism as a teenager when I hitchhiked the universe with a sad robot who once got funny drunk.
When I first realized the meaning of loss, Thoma accompanied me in the burden of the self-acclaimed blame. I cried my lungs out at the cathartic loss of a parent when a little boy roamed a whole city to revive his father, and could not. I occasionally visited the hills of Mussorie and traveled in trains with queer co-passengers when I was sick of the hospital corridors. I felt a rising strength in the pit of my stomach when a wizard beat his past and willed a beautiful future for himself. but I truly rose the day I met Amu, who raised children who inherited her sadness. Amu, with her unsafe edge; who was the unmixable mixture- the infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. She, along with Moonface, Charlie, and Bruno helped me make the reality of my world not matter. I insulated myself from the hardships of a quarter of a century of a lived life with books.
Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered.
