a familiar feeling

It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself.
No milestone marked its progress.
No trees grew along it.
No dappled shaddows shaded it.
No mists rolled over it.
No birds circled it.
No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily her clear view of the end.
This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told.
She dreaded it too much.
So if she were granted one small wish, perhaps it would only have been Not to Know.
Not to know what each day held in store for her.
Not to know where she might be, next month, next year.
Ten years on.
Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend.
And Ammu knew.
Or thought she knew, which was really just as bad (because if in a dream you've eaten fish, it means you've eaten fish).
And what Ammu knew (or thought she knew) of the vapid, vinegary fumes that rose from the cement vats of Paradise Pickles. Fumes that wrinkled youth and pickled futures.
Hooded in her own hair, Ammu leaned against herself in the bathroom mirror and tried to weep.
For herself.
For the God of Small Things.
For the sugar-dusted twin midwives of her dream.

-- Arundhati Roy "The God of Small Things," Chapter 11; pages 211-212