Traffic in the streets of Bombay is chaotic at best. Riding a bicycle is a dangerous occupation. However, there are hundreds of them on the streets competing with the cars and buses and lorries because it is the poor man's mode of transport. Votes: 19
I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition. Votes: 12
Zoroastrianism is about the opposition of good and evil. For the triumph of good, we have to make a choice. We can enlist on the side of good by prospering, making money and using our wealth to help others. Votes: 10
You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. Votes: 7
the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair Votes: 7
All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction. Votes: 5
In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things. Votes: 3
Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people. Votes: 3
...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it's all a question of balance. Votes: 3
After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life. Votes: 3
Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off. Votes: 3
Hahnji, mister, you must be patient. Before you can name that corner, our future must become past. Votes: 3
The whole quilt is much more important than any single square. Votes: 2
democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion Votes: 1
Narayan explained how they had spent the morning, and Dukhi laughed to hear it. the entire episode made Radha furious"Why must you torment the boy? There is no need to make my Om do such dirty work."..."How will he appreciate what he has if he does not learn what his forefathers did? Once a week he will come with me! Whether he likes it or not! Votes: 1
Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it. Votes: 1
Who would want to enter the soiled Temple of Justice, wherein lies the corpse of justice, slain by her very guardians? And now her killers make mock of the sacred process, selling replicas of her blind virtue to the highest bidder. Votes: 1
Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness. Votes: 1
Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus Votes: 1
He pivoted on one buttock and broke wind. Dukhi leaned back to allow it free passage, wondering what penalty might adhere to the offence of interfering with the waft of brahminical flatus. Votes: 1
...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying. Votes: 1
How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness Votes: 1
Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all. Votes: 1
...loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence... Votes: 0
...there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror's wand. Votes: 0
"¦God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don't fit well together anymore, it's all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it. Votes: 0
Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient. Votes: 0
But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain. Votes: 0
Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. Votes: 0
He who spits paan at the ceiling only blinds himself. Votes: 0
How can time be long or short? Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing. And what happened is, our lives have been joined together. Votes: 0
I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future. Votes: 0
If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it. Votes: 0
If time were a bolt of cloth," said Om, "I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily. Votes: 0
In the broad sense, as a processing of everything one hears or witnesses, all fiction is autobiographical - imagination ground through the mill of memory. It's impossible to separate the two ingredients. Votes: 0
In the end, it's all a question of balance. Votes: 0
Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit. Votes: 0
Let me tell you a secret: there is no such thing as an uninteresting life One day you must tell me your full and complete story, unabridged and unexpurgated.We will set aside some time for it, and meet. It's very important. Maneck smiled. 'Why is it important?' It's extremely important because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward, without fear of losing yourself in this ever-changing world. Votes: 0
Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Votes: 0
Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder Votes: 0
Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain. Votes: 0
So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different Votes: 0
The carnage upon the chessboard of life, left wounded humans in its wake Votes: 0
The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring. Votes: 0
The worst part of great poverty is that you become blind to it. Votes: 0
There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting. Votes: 0
There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience. Votes: 0
Time had changed the magical to mundane Votes: 0
Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize... Votes: 0
What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly. Votes: 0
What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time. Votes: 0
Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure... Votes: 0
World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps Votes: 0
You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them, sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success Votes: 0