Sehnsucht

"In order to survey himself in all his finery, he lit a candle by the mirror and watched as he metaporphosed into a glorious bird, a magnificent insect. The mirror was mottled, slightly cloudy, speckled with age. He felt far away, lifted to another plane. Held within this frame, he could have been a photograph, or a painting, a character caught in a storybook. Distant, tinged with mystery, warm with the romance of it all, he felt a sudden sharp longing, a craving for an imagined world, for something he'd never known but felt deep within himself."
-Kiran Desai
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard