"only one way of looking at it"

"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."

- from The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy