Some excerpts from this book i read.. " Taj, A Story of Mughal India"..

Arjumand:
"..We begin life whole, the sum of many people: fathers, mothers, grandfathers, brothers, cousins, sisters. And then, as they die, one by one, each death lessens that whole. We shrink, we shrivel, whittled down until all that remains from the subtraction is our self."


"Did men die or was it the world that died? Our grasp of mortal things,(isa thought,) is tenuous. When Dara died, he passed from our sight. Or is that an arrogant thought? Did we pass from Dara’s sight?.. It was a subtraction, but of what, from what? If the soul returned to brahma, that was then permanence, the world impermanence. We are subtracted then , not the dead."