I Think of Interlaken
At best, a short story can only approach perfection, never attain it. A novella has to be perfect. A novel has to be a sprawling mess. I am thinking of these things as I walk around my neighborhood in Bombay. The streets are wet from the first monsoon showers, which abated only half an hour back. Growling autorickshaws find their way through puddles, sometimes splashing water, and I hop and skip to avoid being at the receiving end. But this is a futile exercise, so I tell myself to just walk, unmindful of how dirty I get. I am walking because…because after twenty months of separation she has invited me to visit her.
