“Everything he owned was in that place, all that he ever worked for; a lifetime’s accumulation of labour stored as a single cache of wood. He thought of the elephants and the bombs falling around them; the flames leaping from a well-stacked wood; the explosions, the trumpeting. It was he who has concentrated all his holdings in this one place — that too was part of the plan — and now the bombs have claimed it all. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered so long as Neel was unharmed. The rest were just things, possessions. But Neel ….. ”

“They came across a lady one day, dressed in a beautiful silk sari, a peacock-green Kanjeevaram. She looked to be from a wealthy family but she too had run out of food. She was trying to bargain with a group of people who were sitting by a fire. Suddenly she began to undress and when she’d stripped off her sari they saw she had others on underneath, beautiful, rich silks, worth hundreds of rupees. She offered up one of these, hoping to exchange it for a handful of food. But no one had any use for it; they asked instead for kindling and wood. They saw her arguing vainly with them — and then perhaps recognising finally the worthlessness of her treasured possession, she rolled he sari into a ball and put in on the fire; the silk burnt with a crackling sound, sending out leaping flames.”