The Far Pavilions

by M.M. Kaye

for the public, it seemed, preferred to believe that which disturbed it least and to ignore troublesome information. Which is a failing common to all nations.

‘Only God is that,’ said Akbar Khan dryly. ‘We, his creatures, are all evil and imperfect, whatever the colour of our skins. But some of us strive for righteousness – and in that there is hope.’

for children ripen early in the East, being reckoned men and women at an age when their brothers and sisters in the West are still in the junior forms at school.

But fate, with a certain amount of human assistance, had other plans

Men are not fair – neither the young nor the old. You should have found that out by now, my son.

People everywhere preferred to make their own mistakes, and resented strangers (even efficient and well-meaning ones) interfering with their affairs.

It was to prove, in long run, one of those trivial incidents that can change the character and course of events in the lives of many more people than those immediately involved,

For men who are relaxed and at ease show a different side of themselves from that which appears when they are on duty;

And there is a wide and fundamental difference between the reasoning of East and West – a fact that has before now confounded many a well-meaning missionary and zealous administrator, and led them to condemn whole nations as immoral and corrupt because their laws and standards, habits and customs, differ from those evolved by the Christian West.

‘Jealousy is an ugly thing,’ mused Kaka-ji, ‘but alas, few if any of us can claim to be free of it. I myself was often afflicted by it in my youth, and though I am now old and should by rights have outgrown such unprofitable emotions, there are still times when I can feel its claws.

it had been a constant battle, and one that he knew he would have to continue fighting until time and old age came to his rescue, for he could not spend his days listening to echoes and living on memories. Life had to be lived,

‘Do not look back.’ The past is the last refuge of the defeated – or the aged – and there is as yet no need for you to number yourself among either. Tell yourself that what is done is done, and put it away and forget it. Do not let yourself remember and try to live on memories. That is well enough for old men who have had their day, but it is bitter fare for the young. So be advised by me, my son, and look forward and not back, remembering always that life is a gift from the gods and therefore not a thing to be despised or wasted. Live it to the full: that is the best advice that I, who did not do so, can give you.’

bringing home to him as nothing else could have done the shortness of the human span and the terrifying swiftness of Time. It was as though he had come without warning upon one of those mile-stones that long after they are passed, stand out in one’s memory as marking the end of a phase

Of late Ash had begun to think of life as far too long, and to see it in imagination as an endless road stretching away ahead of him and leading nowhere, along which he must walk alone; yet now, abruptly, he saw that it was also cruelly short, and was unreasonably shaken by this commonplace discovery.

Studying the old Pathan’s sleeping face, Ash saw the lines of character that were engraved there as clearly as the lines of time: the kindness and wisdom, the firmness, integrity and humour, written plain. A strong face; and a peaceful one. The face of a man who has experienced much and come to terms with life, accepting the bad with the good and regarding both as no more than a part of living – and of the inscrutable purpose of God.

But bardast (tolerance) is a rare flower that grows in few places and withers too easily.

You should rather give thanks for that which was good, instead of wasting your time in fruitless regret for what you cannot have.

no one learnt over-much from the mistakes of their parents and even less from those of their grandparents; for the reason that all men, using hindsight, were convinced that they could have done better, and in trying to prove it either ended up making the same mistakes, or new ones that their children and their children’s children would criticize in their turn.

Ash did not do him the injustice of imagining that he would allow any new friendship to diminish the old one, yet its quality was bound to alter at the will of circumstances and pressures,

Strange how absurdly attached one becomes to one’s own particular crowd.

who could tell what folly a man in love might be capable of committing?

love was not something to be loaned and taken back again, or proffered in the hope of reward. It was a gift – a part of one’s heart, freely bestowed, and with it as a matter of course went loyalty; the two were indivisible.

He still saw things as wrong or right, good or bad, and fair or unfair – as children did, before they learned better. He still thought that he could do something to alter them

the average mind is neither liberal or inquiring, but is in the main intolerant of any attitudes except its own firmly entrenched ones.

The years that had once seemed to drift by so slowly were now passing with ever-increasing swiftness, like a sluggish train that pants and jerks and puffs as it draws away from a station platform, and then, gathering speed, rattles forward faster and ever faster on the iron rails, eating up the miles as time eats up the years.

‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer: let him step to the music that he hears.’

And all at once he knew that this was one of those moments that for no particular reason one remembers for ever, and that remain indelibly printed on the mind when many more important ones fade and are lost.

Also the ignorant everywhere are suspicious of strangers or those who in any way differ from themselves.

I don’t believe that anyone can have no regrets … Perhaps there are times when even God regrets that He created such a thing as man. But one can put them away and not dwell upon them;