Vikram Chandra > Quotes

“The world is a story we tell ourselves about the world.”
― Vikram Chandra

“Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.'
'Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.'
'When are we happy?'
'When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.'
'What is regret?'
'To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future.'
'What is sorrow?'
'To long for the past.'
'What is the highest pleasure?'
'To hear a good story.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“And so I began to read,' Sorkar said. 'And at first the complete works were like a jungle, the language was quicksand. Metaphors turned beneath my feet and became biting snakes, similes fled from my grasp like frightened deer, taking all meaning with them. All was alien, and amidst the hanging, entangling creepers of this foreign grammar, all sound became a cacophany. I feared for myself, for my health and sanity, but then I thought of my purpose, of where I was and who I was, of pain and I pressed on.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever?

But in love

our hearts have mingled
like red earth and pouring rain.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Then what in your opinion is a good story?'

'What it's always been, monkey,' Ganesha said. 'One dhansu conflict. Some chaka-chak song and dance. Grief. Love. Love for the lover, love for the mother. Love for the land. Comedy. Terror. One tremendous villain whom we must love also. All the elements properly balanced and mixed together, item after item, like a perfect meal with a dance of tastes. There you have it.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“The future is simple. The future is simple, I can hold it i the palm of my hand; and the present is just a matter of endurance, detachment, and a sense of humor.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“He has asked himself sometimes if solitude is preferable to boredom or betrayal, which seemed to be the inevitable end of all happy love affairs, of all happy marriages. People clung to one another out of fear. K.D. has preferred the integrity of being alone. He was a realist, he is. He has the strength to face death alone.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“So now that began to develop into a full-fledged shouting match of its own, and all in all it was soon a full-scale old-style Bombay tamasha, with people watching from every balcony and window in every building, up and down the road, laughing and giving advice and yelling at each other.”
― Vikram Chandra, Love and Longing in Bombay

“People had stances, they threw out opinions, they made ferocious noises, but decisions were often made in a flurry of competing silences, and what was not said mattered more than what was.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“if you want to live in the city you have to think ahead three turns, and look behind a lie to see the truth and then behind that truth to see the lie.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“We may read the same texts, but the dhvani that manifests within you will be unique. Your beauty will be your own. If you re-read a story that you read 10 years ago, its dhvani within you will be new. Poetr's beauty is infinite.”
― Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

“Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.”
― Vikram Chandra, Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty

“human beings were stupid, they circled round and around and finally came back to where they started, as if pulled back by the steady tug of an inescapable cord. But”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“--'There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?' The voice laughed--'Why you know already; look in your hands.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“In this city, the rich had some room, and the middle class had less, and the poor had none.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“The truth is that human beings like to be ruled. They will talk and talk about freedom, but they are afraid of it. Overpowered by me, they were safe, and happy.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“I'll give you nothing," Sanjay said, "Because you give us nothing, you cannot save us you cannot protect us." We ask nothing from you," Kala said, "But remember the stories you have been told, see that we are also your fathers, participants in your birth, and so we love you.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“At last I know you: You are Dharma, who is a friend of men and women. You are forever with us, even when we do not know you, you walk with us in our streets and finally we return to you. You are Yammam-Dharmam and you are our father.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

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― Vikram Chandra, ELECTRICIAN KE KAMKAJ

“Disappointment is stronger than a thousand of you.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Men, Shalini said sometimes, there is madness in men. He always kept quiet, but he always wanted to say, the madness is in their bones, not in their hearts, not in their heads.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“The fire had burnt so low that it was only a vague red glow in the night...out of the dark his voice came...”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Words are no match for love.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Maybe this was why people had kids, so that when you could no longer travel with your parents, your children made all train trips new again.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“From the first moment; she said; From the first moment, you forgave everything I was and did. And this, this is nothing, because you will be here always... Remember. Death us nothing.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“The anger on his face slowly vanished... Don't do this. (Listen you miserable bag of wind, you creature who call yourself a god. You have betrayed us. We lose because they are better. We lose because we live in a world of dreams. We lose because we are as children.) My son; says Yama.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“The world's only all comprehensive theory of imperial conquest: the constipation hypothesis, or the shit-glory affinity.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“I am already and always beaten, my love.”
― Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“alone.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games

“...the sodden, sweaty weariness of his own body, the whisky misery of it.”
― Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games