Perhaps it's
true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the
outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like
the salvaged remains of a burned house---the charred clock, the singed
photograph, the scorched furniture---must be resurrected from the ruins and
examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and
reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached
bones of a story.
~
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1997