Twilight in Delhi: A Novel

by Ahmed Ali

'The beauty of the body is like a flower,' Asghar philosophized, 'which attracts the bulbul to itself and breaks his heart, like a candle which tempts the moths and burns their wings.'

'We are but travellers on the road; It matters not if we are dead or live; Our life is like a candle flame: You had put us out and we had died; Now you have lighted us we are alight.'

'When there is such pleasure in throwing it out, how great would be the bliss in keeping it.'

She had licked the water from the gutter and had come back to life. So does life inflict wounds on men, thought Mir Nihal, but, looking grey for some time, they become whole and hale again.

This world is a house of many mirrors. Wherever you turn, you see your own images in the glass. They multiply and become innumerable until you begin to feel frightened of your own self.

For if it were not for Hope, men would commit suicide by the scores, and the world would remain a barren desert in which no oasis exists. On this tortuous road of Life, man goes on hoping that the next turn of the road will bring him in sight of the goal. But when he takes the turn and still there is no sign of the promised land he still says that at the next turning he will come to it. Thus from turn to turn he goes on hoping, believing in the will-o'-the-wisp that is Hope.

He who makes my woes for me Will think about my woes. My brooding over them would be A greater woe than those.

The real causes of the loss of the Mughal Empire were some mistakes committed by the elders of that king, and the biggest of them all was that they had separated lover and beloved from each other, by burying Mohammad Shah between the graves of Hazrat Mahboob Elahi and Hazrat Amir Khusro.

But happy are they who feel not, for they do not know, and miserable are those who see and suffer and can do nothing. A fire burns within their breasts; but the flames do not shoot up. Only the soul is consumed by the internal heat and they feel dead, so dead, alas....

Yet he was not so much in love with her as with his own self, his own dreams and illusions which she had created in his mind....