Multilate. Ha Ha Ha,’ said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. ‘Its all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a see saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion....

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.

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...

A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.

…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...

Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the...

I almost forgot to tell you – you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the station will process your bones to help you confess.

You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and...

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

That’s the secret – to distract the senses. Have I told you my theory about them? I think that our sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing are all calibrated for the enjoyment of a perfect world....

I made up three lists: Candidate’s Accomplishments (real and imaginary), Accusations Against Opponent (including rumours, allegations, innuendos, and lies), and Empty Promises (the more improbable, the better). Then it was merely a matter of taking...

Depression is a red herring,” said Nariman. “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...

There must be a lot of duplication in our country’s laws,” said Dukhi. “Every time there are elections, they talk of passing the same ones passed twenty years ago. Someone should remind them they need...

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

The joy and laughter and youth they brought was an antidote to the somberness enveloping his flat, the hours when he felt the very walls and ceilings were encrusted with the distress of of unhappy...

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

Time had changed the magical to mundane

In those days,” continued Ishvar, “it seemed to me that that was all one could expect in life. A harsh road strewn with sharp stones and, if you were lucky, a little grain.””And later?””Later I...

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

Maneck studied beggermaster’s excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did human do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward...

…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 –...

He winced at her efforts to mollify him. Why didn’t she say she was disgusted with his behaviour, with his long absence, his infrequent superficial letters? And if she did say it – would he...

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.

You fellows are amazing,’ the sweaty cook roared over the stoves. ‘Everything happens to you only. Each time you come here, you have a new adventure story to entertain us

Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote, “All things fall and are built again, and those that build them are gay.

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

Does it stand, but not straight enough? Is there a bend in the tool? Leaning left like the Marxist-Leninist Party? To the right, like the Jan Sangh fascists? Or wobbling mindlessly in the middle, like...

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.

democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion

…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.

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...

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness