The only miracles in life are wrought by time.

Where do songs go when you cease to hear them? Where does the turbulence of the air disappear after thousands of birds flap their wings homeward at eventide? Where are the cries of the Rajput women who spatter their red palm prints on the wall and leap into the flames of johar? Where is my childhood, my catapult, my broken slate, my first parrot, my youth and first sin and all those that followed, where is my old age and the first time I saw the woman from Merta? Ask Gambhiree. She knows it all.

Rigour and ruthlessness do not preclude sympathy with another’s point of view.

If not absolution, I yelled, give me oblivion.

The only battles that he and his kin fought, the only blood they spilt was on the chessboard. Massacres and carnage were not to his taste. He preferred the long, slow, tortuous death. I.

I sometimes think that Buddhism is the toughest religion in the world. It not only eschews all talk of god but does not allow any instant remedies. Responsibility for one’s own acts is its only metaphysics. So.

Grammar, he felt, was a sign of competence, not of excellence.

When you deal with naked power from an inferior position, perspectives get distorted.

When you deal with naked power from an inferior position, perspectives get distorted. He was the aggrieved party and yet he felt guilty and would continue to do so all his life.

Leelawati was sitting on a swing in the palace. Without meaning to, i ran towards her. She swung herself from the swing straight into my arms and hugged me. She wouldn’t let go of me and i wasn’t about to let go of her. To be trusted so, without any reservations, i too must have been up to some good in my past lives.