> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://thedreampedlar.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # books you may love: Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel - URL: https://thedreampedlar.com/lightbreakers-by-aja-gabel/ - Published: 2026-10-17T15:46:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T15:46:38.000Z - Description: ruminating on the beauty of life and all its experiences - joy, grief, loss - seen through the lens of a one-of-its-kind tale of time travel - Author: Anitha Krishnan - Tags: books you may love Some books make for enjoyable reading. Some change who you are. Their words reach out of the page and slip into your heart and jolt it awake from whatever kind of slumber it may have accidentally fallen into, not having encountered a rich, soul-searing story in a while. [*Monstrilio*](https://thedreampedlar.com/monstrilio-by-gerardo-samano-cordova/) by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, and Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reed — a book I fawned over in two separate posts [here](https://thedreampedlar.com/the-everlasting-delights-of-reading-amazing-books/) and [here](https://thedreampedlar.com/shape-shifting-memories-and-a-fierce-but-gentle-love/) — fall in the latter category. And now they're joined there by [*Lightbreakers*](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/226743876-lightbreakers) by Aja Gabel. Noah is a quantum physicist married to Maya, an artist. Before meeting Maya, Noah shared a child with his ex-wife, Eileen; the child, Serena, died when she was three. When Klein, an eccentric billionaire, invites Noah to be part of a time travel project, Noah simply cannot resist. The possibility of seeing Serena again is one he can't let slip by. The story revolves around this mad experiment and how the three characters navigate this experience. --- By now, I can tell what kind of stories leave a deep impression on me. These are tales that dive deep into the messy labyrinth of human emotions and experiences, amplifying them against the background of ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Emotions are my love language. I understand people through the secret code of their thoughts and emotions. I'm endlessly fascinated by how they think and feel about the world and themselves and their lives. And I'm equally fascinated by how differently someone can think from me. I mean, it's a given that people bring different perspectives. That much is obvious. But somehow being able to receive and understand those perspectives illuminates this world a little more for me each time that happens. When I was ten, the age that D is now, my cousin and I were playing with stones. One threw a stone backwards, not knowing exactly where to aim, and the other had to catch it. When it was my turn to catch the stone, it slipped through my hands and hit me in the mouth, chipping off part of a front tooth. I can still recall with vivid detail how sensitive the nerve endings of the tooth became for a few days, how the adults in the family chided me for having kept my mouth open in the midst of playing 🙄 at a time when I was feeling rather scared and worried. I've shared this story of my chipped tooth with D many times (minus the insensitive adults part), much to his amusement as he tried to examine the ceramic bit that was attached to the tooth a few years after that incident occurred. A year or so ago, I was driving D home after school one day and we were talking about past experiences. And he said, "I think if you've already experienced something once, you won't be scared of it anymore. Because you know you faced it once, so you can do it again." I was stunned. Because this is quite the opposite of what I've long believed. That if I've had an unpleasant experience once, I'd go out of my way to avoid it the next time, simply because I'd remember how hard it had been to get through it the first time around. And I recounted the tooth incident as an example. But even as I did so, it struck me how limiting that belief has been. > *How does one go from "I've faced rejections before. I can face a few more." to "I can't bear another rejection. It hurts too much."?* > *How on earth does one ever forget to tell oneself, "You've done hard things before. You can do this."?* I remember a friend of mine from Rotman, where I was doing an MBA more than a decade ago, said, "I need some successes now. I've gone far too long without seeing any wins." I think I subconsciously adopted that as an internal mantra and twisted it further into the belief that if I were not seeing success of some kind, I was probably headed in the wrong direction. Thus began my obsession with ensuring I did everything I could in the present moment to guarantee a desired future outcome. There's no other aspect in life like parenting that triggers your worst insecurities and deepens your self-doubt. Because how do you find successes along the way when it comes to parenting your child? It's like waiting for a flower to bloom. That's going to happen in its own time, of its own free will. Overwatering would only kill it. No amount of sitting by its side and watching and whispering, "Grow! Grow! Grow!" is going to hasten the process. And who knows — after all that effort, the flower might decide to not bloom for reasons you'll never know! *Is that what causes the optimism of childhood and youth to slowly give way to pessimism and cynicism? Time? And the vicissitudes of life it brings with it?* --- Anyhoo, now that I've digressed a long, long way from the originally intended topic of this post, let's come back to *Lightbreakers*. Again, this is a novel best lauded through excerpts. Firstly, Gabel begins with an excerpt from Carlo Rovelli's *The Order Of Time*. > And we begin to see that we are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come. The clearing that is opened up in this way, by memory and by anticipation, is time: a source of anguish sometimes, but in the end a tremendous gift. > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel, featuring an excerpt from Carlo Rovelli's *The Order Of Time*. > # I love this passage! I wonder what Jiddu Krishnamurti would have had to say about this line of thought. In fact, I think these words reinforce his teachings, in a way. From what I understand of JK's teachings by listening to his talks frequently, he talks about psychological time as the source of anguish and suffering. Psychological time is created by thought, which takes past memory and experience and concocts an image of an ideal future, thereby creating an interval of time in between, that liminal space from which arises great anguish and conflict and sorrow. I know this so well. The days I've spent in anxiety, wondering what D's future would look like, what my future would look like! Then chiding myself for not being able to adopt a more optimistic attitude. If my mind is going to fill itself with grave imaginings, why not compel it to think positively instead? Alternately, going over past decisions and wondering why I hadn't made different choices. *I ought to have known better.* Hindsight tends to add fuel to the flames of regret. The cessation of this conflict, Krishnamurti says, doesn't have to be a gradual process requiring discipline and practice. Instead, it's the direct act of seeing 'what is' without commentary or judgement. Going back to Rovelli's words, at first glance, declaring something that is a source of anguish to be a tremendous gift came across to me as an act of romanticizing. But perhaps, another way of looking at it is that yes, psychological time is a source of conflict, whereas it is pure, unadulterated presence that is the tremendous gift. Aren't we capable of both in this moment? ![silhouette of a man looking up at a starry sky in the nighttime](https://thedreampedlar.com/content/images/2026/10/greg-rakozy-oMpAz-DN-9I-unsplash.jpg) Photo by [Greg Rakozy](https://unsplash.com/@grakozy?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-photography-of-person-oMpAz-DN-9I?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) --- > The question — "How did you meet your husband?" — was not uncommon, especially after people found out Maya was married to a scientist, as though science and art were incompatible. But today she hesitated before answering. This woman was staring at her, her expression expectant beneath a smear of gold eyeshadow. Caroline, Maya's boss and good friend, appeared before them, her smile tight. > "Maya?" Caroline said, laughing a little. "What, did you forget how you met your husband?" > What Maya was trying to describe was a delicate balance between what it had felt like then and what it felt like now. Then: lightness, the promise of the unknown. Now: Even though so much was known, there remained an unknown slice. But this slice was not light, not a promise. Only gray space on a map, unexplorable land. > Maya blushed. "Oh, sorry. I was just remembering it. He wandered into a talk I was giving to my graduate professors," she said, making it simple. But then she said, "When we got talking, it felt like there was so much potential for happiness. Like we were two sides of a convoluted math equation. And once you solved for everything, all the variables or imaginary numbers or whatever, there we were. My flaws and needs accounted for in his strengths, and vice versa." > Caroline and the woman continued to stare at her, uncomprehending. > "He's a physicist but he mostly works in mathematical modelling," Maya said. > "Ah," the woman said. "One forgets math is the basis of everything." > "I don't know," Maya said. "The ancient cave paintings in France might have you believe otherwise." > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # If I met Maya in real life, we'd be best friends. I'd understand her completely. And I'd be able to tell her everything that runs in my mind, without having to simplify it in some way so that I come across as less deranged. But I'd disagree with her on one crucial point. Like I [wrote](https://thedreampedlar.com/story-of-a-vaccination-and-of-sadness-my-everlasting-companion-and-guide/) more than five years ago, *If there's anything I've seen consistently in life, it's this: We mistakenly assume that we can live life like a precise mathematical equation.* *A + B = C.* *But we always forget the margin of error that appears in more complex problems. Because the simple, most overlooked truth is that there are no guarantees in life.* ![](https://thedreampedlar.com/content/images/2026/10/Book-Cover-5.jpeg) What did she want? To know what to want, how to want it? \~ An excerpt from **Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel --- If there's a discussion on the nature of consciousness, count me in! It's the very essence of my days, these days. Conscious living. Awareness. Presence. > All because his paper, "Quantum Tunneling and Electromagnetic Fields in the Brain," had dared to make the case that human consciousness arose from quantum mechanics. Almost everyone in neuroscience agreed that consciousness is a product of classical physics — complex neural activity in the brain. The problem, however, was that scientists hadn't determined exactly *what* activity produced consciousness, because the brain's neural network was the most advanced computing system on earth. But if that was the case, then why couldn't a very powerful computer reproduce consciousness? So, in that vacuum of provability, a fringe idea from quantum physics emerged: The brain didn't operate like a classical computer, and instead, on the smallest scale of the brain, the scale of particles and fields, a quantum phenomenon must be taking place, resulting in consciousness. > The theory was unpopular and disorganized, but it had appealed to Noah. His paper looked at the role of electromagnetic fields in the neural encoding of memories, involving particle entanglement. Entanglement, that strange idea in quantum physics that two entangled particles can be connected even when separated by vast distances. What Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." For Noah, the spookiness was exciting, a place to posit theories, to explore the edges of possibility, to practice believing. But with his paper, that excitement had exposed something laughable, a tendency toward an unprovable faith in quantum physics. > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # I don't ever recall anyone explaining a concept of quantum physics so beautifully. These words bring to mind a lecture on *Thermodynamics* that a professor named M. S. Ananth delivered to a bunch of clueless, impressionable adolescents in a classroom more than two decades ago. At the time, if I'm not mistaken, he was the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering in IIT Madras, where I studied and from where I graduated. We were probably in our third year, if I recall correctly. Professor Ananth spent the entire hour talking about thermodynamics and life. Sadly I don't remember a single detail of what he spoke that day nor have I ever been able to paraphrase what he spoke about that day — but isn't that the treacherous slipperiness of enlightenment and wisdom? — but what I left with was a feeling of expansiveness and enlightenment, a newfound understanding that thermodynamics was far more than a bunch of equations, and that even a rugged discipline like engineering had an untouchable beauty to it, if only we could develop the ability to behold it that way. ![suspension bridge against a cloudy sky at sunset](https://thedreampedlar.com/content/images/2026/10/albert-stoynov-H-yX1vFOrv8-unsplash.jpg) Photo by [Albert Stoynov](https://unsplash.com/@albertstoynov?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/suspension-bridge-against-a-cloudy-sky-at-sunset-H-yX1vFOrv8?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) --- The following exchange between Noah and Klein at their first meeting at the latter's place is one I've read over and over again. > Noah laughed. The fish was buttery, tender, the freshest he'd ever tasted. He had to slow himself down. The drive had been long, and he was starving. "I think there is no evidence that a soul doesn't exist. Hard to prove either way." > "Mm," Klein said. "Do you want to know what I think?" > "I didn't know I was allowed to ask you questions." > Klein laughed at this. "Of course you are." > "Okay. Do you believe in a soul?" > "It's as reasonable to believe that quantum mechanics is responsible for human consciousness as it is to believe that there is a classical physics justification, which has yet to be proven. It stands to reason that electromagnetic fields could amplify quantum effects in the brain's neurons on a macro level, concerning coherence across consciousness levels." > Noah put his fork down. Klein was parroting back to him, word for word, the final paragraph of Noah's forgotten, laughed-at paper. Klein continued, "But I leave such expansive proposals to be examined by future scientists." > Noah spoke aloud the paper's next sentence, the part that everyone seemed to forget, which was his disclaimer: "Who am I to say?" > "Ah," Klein said. "So hello. This is the future, Noah. You are the future scientists." > "I wasn't talking about the soul in that paper." > "You were talking about consciousness, something more than synapses and neurons." > "But I didn't name it the soul." > "You didn't say it outright, but you were talking about it." > Okay. Noah would give in a little. "What I think is that consciousness has to be more than classical mechanics. Otherwise we'd be able to replicate consciousness with a complex machine." > "But we haven't yet made a machine as complex as the human brain." > "Are you arguing against me now?" > Klein smiled warmly. "For argument's sake." > "Okay, then. Your argument doesn't make what I'm saying untrue, necessarily. If we could make a machine as complex as the human brain, all I'm saying is that we'd likely have to replicate quantum processes in that complex machine to produce consciousness." > "To produce a soul." > "To produce the ability to know who we are, to understand past and future, to have moral quandaries, to desire and want, to regret." > "To believe in something." > "Yes." > "Which is what a soul is, isn't it?" > "The part of us that believes," Noah said. > Klein slapped the table, excited. "That's why you're here." > "You made a machine with a soul?" > "No, of course not." Klein laughed a little. "I made a machine that can transport a soul." > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # I was on the phone with a very dear friend of mine once. This too was a couple of decades ago, when I was in my twenties. I had decided to try my hand at freelance writing, an unusual step back then for someone with a degree in engineering. But this particular friend of mine was full of encouragement for me. We all need friends like that, and we all need to be friends like that, especially during difficult times. Anyhoo, I remember this friend saying that he wished he could bring the geniuses of the world — scientists, inventors, explorers, daredevils — into a single room and hear them talk. Observe how they think and reason, how their logic works. We haven't been in touch for a while, but I wonder if he listens to podcasts these days, interviews with the best minds of the generation, if he hasn't yet grasped that often, the people with the best brains were also the ones without kind hearts. I am already disillusioned on that front, but that's beside the point. I think that friend of mine would have enjoyed sitting in on a conversation like the one above between Noah and Klein. --- > But the purchases felt unsatisfying. What she wanted to buy was something she couldn't name, some feeling inside her that had gone missing. > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # I too want something that will plug this hole I constantly feel in my heart. A hole that was probably created in the act of growing up. This hole that makes me think that a missing piece exists somewhere in this Universe, and if only I can find it and stuff it into my chest, my heart will be whole and grand again. --- > "No good life is free from unease, because unease is the start of exploration." Her mother laughed. "My father used to say that. It's what he told me when I left California for Tokyo. I was so scared. But I knew there was something else out there for me." > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # --- > "You're forty-two," Klein said. > "Forty-three," Noah corrected, but Klein didn't seem to register it. > "It's clear you've preserved your mind, which is what we want. We find that most mathematicians have done that well. Physicists not so much. It's easy for them to get caught up in the absence of answers." Klein sat back in his chair. He'd barely touched his food. "But I find that when you have a framework with which to look at the problem, the absence of answers becomes merely an empty corridor for you to walk down and populate. How thrilling." > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # --- > He liked to say that what he did, science, was "toward the promise of answers," and that what Maya did, art, was "in spite of answers." > But if they had been able to have that conversation, if Noah had delivered that line to her once again, Maya would have told him no, he was wrong, they *both* looked for provable answers. In Noah's profession they came through math and logic. In Maya's they came through penumbra, outlining the part of the gesture that wasn't quite visible. Noah would have resisted this, Maya knew. For him, a statement was not true until proven true through math; reality was suspicious until it had a corresponding equation. > She thought of an artist she loved, Ruth Asawa, and how she'd once said that the art object itself didn't matter as much as the process of making it, that the process of making the art should reveal you to yourself, as each moment is a decision, and each decision is a chipping away at your mask. > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel > # This was another passage that stayed close to my heart. For this is how I've come to view my writing as well. For several years, I was caught up in wanting to figure out how to make money through my books. Like a reindeer whose antlers have gotten tangled in the branches, I tugged and pushed this way and that, only to find myself in the same place, much more entangled than before. Now that I have decided to put that aspect of publishing aside, writing has become a joy once more. I write to understand my thoughts better. To figure out what beliefs I have subscribed to without knowing it, what moves me and touches me deeply, what feels like an utter waste of time. When I write about these books or my life or even fiction, I feel closer to understanding myself and touching my essence, my spirit, more than ever before. --- > ... but then there was the way motherhood slowly and almost pleasantly throttled the version of her who didn't have a child, until what remained felt permanent. Noah, Serena, Eileen. But it was only when she'd done her ultimate disassembly, the transition from a mother into a childless mother, and then into a lone woman once again, that she found out what could happen when you simply let life abrade you. > Abrasions: the discordant stuffed animal in the back of the dark closet. A child lock on the junk drawer that she'd forgotten how to open. The alien sounds of her own sobbing in the clean, sunny kitchen, unreturned by an awoken baby. She wondered if she was still a mother if what made her a mother was gone, but she found no answer to that wondering. Eventually, it was less horrible to stop wondering. > ... > Life abraded; she remade. But the acuteness of the loss remained. No matter how many coffees taken on porches, or new leases signed, or nice divorced men met at wine bars, her former life pulsed inside her. It often felt like an illness, this one a confusion of time, the logic inside her no longer aligned with what was happening outside her body. Other times, it felt like a blessing. How lucky, to live two lives at once. And so she lived like that, an ecstatic sickness churning the water of her days. > \~ An excerpt from *Lightbreakers* by Aja Gabel --- This is a book I could quote from endlessly. The passages are gorgeous. If I were that kind of a person, I'd get a quote or two tattooed on my skin. In the end, all I can say is that reading *Lightbreakers* was a beautiful experience. Even though it dealt with the grief of losing a child, it never felt heavy. There was a certain tenderness in the way each character's inner world was explored and presented. So much so that it was impossible to not empathize with each one of them, even when they were at loggerheads with each other. I think this is what reading does best. It puts us in the heads of so many different characters that we simply cannot help but develop a great deal of empathy for people and all living beings, both in books and in real life. When D was much younger and I'd read tonnes of picture books to him, I'd find myself feeling sad even for, say, a broken teapot, because it happened to recount to the teacup how it broke. An excerpt from T.S. Eliot's *Four Quartets* plays a significant role in *Lightbreakers*. I went looking for it and found these lines from the first quartet, titled Burnt Norton. And this is what I shall leave you with. Human beings' fascination with life and time and thought and consciousness. > *Time present and time past* > *Are both perhaps present in time future,* > *And time future contained in time past.* > *If all time is eternally present* > *All time is unredeemable.* > *What might have been is an abstraction* > *Remaining a perpetual possibility* > *Only in a world of speculation.* > *What might have been and what has been* > *Point to one end, which is always present.* > *\~ An excerpt from Burnt Norton, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot* ![a wooden hourglass with blue sand set on a bed of pebbles](https://thedreampedlar.com/content/images/2026/10/aron-visuals-BXOXnQ26B7o-unsplash.jpg) Photo by [Aron Visuals](https://unsplash.com/@aronvisuals?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/selective-focus-photo-of-brown-and-blue-hourglass-on-stones-BXOXnQ26B7o?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText)