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June 2022: The Illicit Happiness of Others (Manu Joseph)

``On a street where every boy knows that his future rests on a single test with multiple-choice questions, it is appropriate that the four identical buildings here are named A, B, C and D." ``Sai stands in his spineless way, young but antiquated, studious but not clever, a thick steel watch on his wrist, his oiled black hair combed in the good-boy hairstyle. He looks like the past of an old man." ``Sai will learn to be happy again one day, he will even imagine that he is not worthless. He does not know it yet but the simple fact is that he will make it. Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness and Sai has a lot of that to pull through." ``Strong people write bad stories." ``What’s real about a name?" ``‘So all that we think is good,’ Beta says, ‘love and art and enlightenment, and all that we think is the pursuit of truth is actually a form of evil." ``He said every delusion has an objective, and the objective of a delusion is not merely to colonize one br...