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Ashok Ferrey Biography

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“In Sri Lanka, nothing succeeds like death-it is the ultimate validation. The man you hate in life becomes instantly your idol in death. Any neglected artist can take heart; reviled whilst alive, he only has to wait patiently for death to become the national hero he has always yearned to be.”

DeathLossDeath Of A Loved OneSri LankaDeath Of A ParentAshok FerreySri Lankan AuthorsThe Unmarriageable Man
Book:The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel
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“We are so obsessed with the quick clean end, the end that takes no longer than the length of a Hollywood film, that we have invented this word 'closure' for it-hoping that the truth of of this heroic compound will follow shortly after the naming of it. If the word exists, the concept must, mustn't it? But I will tell you differently. All that exists at the end is the sheer animal act of forgetting, and the act of forgiving ourselves for forgetting. It is a physical thing born of years of harrowing repetition and replay: the road so often travelled that the scenery is no longer visible, the paragraph so often read that the sense is no longer apparent. - Sanjay de Silva”

GriefRegretGrief And LossClosureClosure QuotesAshok FerreySri Lankan AuthorsThe Unmarriageable Man
Book:The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel
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“In Sri Lanka, the people you lived amongst, the people you went to school with, the people in whose houses you ate, whose jokes you shared: these were not the people you married. Quite possibly they were not your religion. More to the point they were probably not your caste. This word with its fearsome connotations was never, hardly ever used. But it was ever present: it muddied the waters of Sri Lanka's politics, it perfumed the air of her bed-chambers; it lurked, like a particularly noxious relative, behind the poruwa of every wedding ceremony. It was the c-word. People used its synonym, its acronym, its antonym-indeed any other nym that came to mind - in the vain hope its meaning would somehow go away. It didn't. But if the people you chose to associate with were the very ones you could not marry, then the ones you did marry were quite often people you wouldn't dream of associating with if you had any choice in the matter.”

LifeMarriageTraditionCasteSrilankaShortstories
Book:The Good Little Ceylonese Girl
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“You only judge the quality of your life in retrospect, needing the wisdom of hindsight to assign comparative value. By then it is too damned late, because the days have slipped through your fingers. All you have left are memories, which you may tell over and over like the beads of an old woman's rosary, but they are only beads after all.”

LifeLife LessonsMemoriesLife Lessons QuotationsPast And PresentPast QuotesDays Gone ByAshok FerreySri Lankan AuthorsThe Unmarriageable Man
Book:The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel
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