Havelock

Тоска

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

- Nabokov. 

Rice fields

Bus ride from Siem Reap to Poipet border in Cambodia, on my way to Bangkok. My co-passengers were a young thai girl and an old Russian man on their way to Pataya. They were eating sweet mangoes which was making me very nauseous. Somewhere half way there, a woman started screaming "Tuk-Tuk - Hospital - Stop - My husband - He is dead" I froze. I saw two seats ahead of me a man was lying lifeless, his woman hysterical - unwilling to touch him. There was a doctor on borad who revived him. "He has suffered a minor stroke, but is stable" she declared. After sometime, we were on our way again.