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The past, beloved enemy, has bad timing. Those Bombay days come back to me so vividly and suddenly that sometimes I’m shaken from the hour I’m in, and lost to the task. A smile, a song, and I’m back there, sleeping sunny mornings away, riding a motorcycle on a mountain road, or tied and beaten and begging Fate for an even break. And I love every minute of it, every minute of friend or foe, of flight and forgiveness: every minute of life. But the past has a way of taking you to the right place at the wrong time, and that can be a storm inside.
‘Of course. Writers never really die, until people stop quoting them.’
Every man takes a beating in his own way. My way, in those years, was to learn everything I could about the men who beat me, and then wait for Fate to meet me halfway.
Religion is just a long competition to see who can design the silliest hat.
‘I think you should make a promise to the universe that you’ll always dance in the rain, at least once, if you’re in Bombay during monsoon.’
Fear is a wolf on a chain, only dangerous when you set it free. Sorrow exhausts itself in the net of forgetting. Anger, for all its fury, can be killed by a smile. Only hope goes on forever, because hope doesn’t belong to us: it belongs to our ancestors, the first of our kind, whose brave love for one another gave us most of the good that we are.
There are a hundred good girls on every bad street, waiting for a guy who usually isn’t worth it.
There were times, I think, when I wanted her to want me, and love me, and let me love her in return. There were times when I hoped that it would happen. But wanting more was a sign of how little we had.
‘I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I’ve actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you’ve gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who’ll be able to prove they’re sane will be the people behind bars.’
‘People don’t belong to one another,’ I said softly. ‘They can’t. That’s the first rule of freedom.’
Everyone has one eye that’s softer and sadder, and one that’s hard and bright.
‘Every goodbye is a dress rehearsal for the last goodbye,’
Fate plays poker, and only wins by bluffing. Fate is the magician, and Time is the trick. Fate is the spider, and Time is the web.
‘All wars are culture wars, and all cultures are written on the bodies of women.’
‘If you’re not living for something, you’re dying for nothing!’
Men are dogs, Didier once said to me, without the manners.
Loyalty is something you need for things you don’t love enough. When you love enough, loyalty isn’t even a question.
‘It took so long, fourteen billion years, for this part of the universe to bring into being a consciousness, right here, capable of knowing and actually calculating that it took fourteen thousand million years to make the calculation. We don’t have the right to throw those fourteen billion years away. We don’t have the moral right to waste or damage or kill this consciousness. And we don’t have the right to surrender its will, the most precious and beautiful thing in the universe. We have a duty to study, to learn, to question, to be fair and honest and positive citizens. And above all, we
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‘He says that the one sure sign of a fanatic is that he has no sense of humour.
‘You know what,’ I said. ‘To hell with Ranjit.’ ‘I’d agree with you,’ she said, ‘if I didn’t think I might have to join him there one day.’
‘Mercy,’ she said softly. ‘My favourite inessential virtue.
‘Who are we to believe in God?’ she said, her lips only lashes from my face. ‘It should be enough for anyone that God believes in us.’
‘Life is short,’ the tall young bartender said, easing the cork from the bottle with a fist. ‘But made of long nights.’ ‘That’s why it’s so lonely at the top,’ Karla put in. ‘It’s lonely at the top,’ he replied quickly, filling Karla’s glass, ‘because it’s so crowded at the bottom.’
‘I used to ask questions. Are you here on a business trip? Do you have any kids? Why do you think your wife doesn’t understand you? But, after a while, I started breaking my part of the conversation down into little pieces of the truth. Barmen never get more than a line or two. It’s a narrative rule, I’m afraid.
‘Resentment is unmet need or desire,’
Regret is a ghost of love. Regret is a nicer self that we send into the past from time to time, even though we know it’s too late to change what we said, or did.
Love in all the past lives, every time we’d loved each other and lost each other: starlight on her sleeping face.
But we also knew, or willed ourselves to believe, that saints forgive what the world shuns. And we were sure in those moments of the walk, despite our sacrilege, that he knew we loved him: the eternally patient saint, who listened to our gangster prayer as he slept on the sea.
Jealousy has no mirror, and resentment has a tin ear for the truth.
In the world we created for ourselves, it’s a lie to be a man, and a lie to be a woman. A woman is always more than any idea imposed on her, and a man is always more than any duty imposed on him. Men empathise, and women lead armies. Men raise infants, and women explore the exosphere. We’re not one thing or the other: we’re very interesting versions of each other. And men, too, cry in the shower, sometimes.
Is it a sin to give your love to someone, when you can’t give your heart?
‘Men like that you crush, or you leave behind,’
