Song of Kali

Once again I realized that the greatest argument against marriage, the absolutely irrefutable argument against living with one person for years, was the destruction of the illusion of free will by the spouse's constant recognition of one's total predictability.

"Sets and number theories overlap," said Amrita. I suddenly realized by the tension in her voice that she was very serious. "Geometries don't. Different geometries are based on different theorems, postulate different axioms, and give rise to different realities." "Different realities?" I repeated. "How can you hav

Something in Amrita's voice caught my attention. There were times when she asked, "Shall we go to bed?" and there were times when she said Shall we go to bed? This had been one of the latter.

Something about the Calcutta night worked directly upon the darkest regions of my mind. Brief clutches of an almost childlike fear tugged at my consciousness and were forced down again by the adult mind. The sounds of the night held no threat in and of themselves—distant shouts, sibilant scrapings, an occasional muffled snatch of conversation as we

Amrita looked back at the pool. "When I was seven years old," she said, "the summer before we moved to London, I saw a ghost."

"My body sank then. I say 'my body' because I died then, Mr. Luczak. There is no doubt of that. But a strange phenomenon occurred. One's spirit does not depart immediately after death, but, rather, watches the disposition of events much as a disinterested spectator might. How else can I describe the sensation of seeing one's twisted body sink

"Gandhiji once said, 'A man cannot fully live unless he has died at least once.' By the time I had disembarked from my first-class coach at Howrah Station, I had acknowledged the imperative of that great truth. To live—in my soul, in my art—I would have to cast off the appurtenances of my old life. "I gave my two suitcases to the first be

Ripples of light from underwater spotlights danced across the heavy foliage and lowered bamboo curtains. I noticed a dark shape floating in the shallow end of the pool and realized that it was a drowned rat.

"I awoke within the embrace of Kali. She is the only deity who defies both death and time. She resurrected me then, Mr. Luczak, but only for her own purposes. Only for her own purposes. As you can see, the Dark Mother did not see fit to remove the scourge of my affliction when she restored the breath to my body." "What were those pur