"I blew out the lamp," wrote Rabindranath Tagore, "with the idea of turning in to bed. No sooner had I done so, through the open windows, the moonlight burst in to the room, with a shock of surprise . . . [I]f I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my life--letting the lamp triumph to the end . . . even then the moon would still have been there, sweetly smiling unperturbed and unobstructive, waiting for me as she has throughout the ages."
--from page 263 of
All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy
Rabindranath Tagore is an actual poet--many of the characters in Ms Roy's latest seem to have been real people--and I'm not sure if this is her own translation or someone else's. I just know that it's a fine bit of writing, as is the rest of the novel.
