A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

The secret of being a bore is to say everything. Voltaire

It was pleasant to think of shattered hearts on a cloudless morning.

“Come in the palanquin, leave on the bier”: that’s the way it is with the daughters-in-law in that house.’

The ifs and buts of history, thought the Nawab Sahib, form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.

I’ve learned to follow another voice, to be alone and to understand things—maybe to be alone and to be misunderstood.’

But do you know the question that disconcerted me most of all when I first came here twenty years ago and saw all these beautiful, elegantly dressed women?’ Jock Mackay cheerfully and confidingly jerked his head towards the drawing room. ‘How do you fuck in a sari?’

‘What people think, what people say, and what people do are two different things,’

If I achieve nothing else in life, thought Lata, I shall at least have turned into one of the World’s Great Neurotics.

It may be human nature, but I do not want to be at the receiving end of human nature.

There is no place here to spread my wings.

‘They say he takes Rama’s name all day. Why does he do so?’ ‘Wood burns when rubbed and rubbed till it gives you the light you desire.’

Well, I made the point that there are three kinds of teachers: those who are forgotten, those who are remembered and hated, and the third, the lucky ones, and I hope I am one of them, those who are remembered and’—he paused—‘forgiven.’

‘Like love we don’t know where or why Like love we can’t compel or fly Like love we often weep Like love we seldom keep.’

A night of memories and of sighs.’

Better than all the world is this our Hindustan. We are its nightingales, it is our rose garden.’

Beauty, fragrance, music, food, poetry, and a source of intoxication in his pocket: ah, Maan felt, as their eyes met, this is what happiness means.

I am a practical man and I am proud of it—but sometimes I come across situations that I do not know how to handle despite my well- formed opinions, and I find that after all perhaps there is less reason to be proud than I thought.

Sensitive people are usually very insensitive—I should know.