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Kindle Notes & Highlights
He was not insolvent, just illiquid. But even as he spoke he knew what their answer would be. He knew that money, unlike labour, owed no allegiance to a particular trade, and could flow out of shoes and into, say, cold storage facilities without retraining or compunction or doubt.
The ifs and buts of history, thought the Nawab Sahib, form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.
‘Everything good is always about to happen, and everything bad always happens.’
‘It’s just a heart, not brick and stone, why should it then not fill with pain? Yes, I will weep a thousand times, why should you torture me in vain?’
‘Many years ago you told me that until you were forty you were very concerned about what people thought of you. Then you decided to be concerned about what you thought of other people instead.’
In microcosm those two pages reflected the passage of an empire and the birth of two countries from the idea—tragic and ignorant—that people of different religions could not live peaceably together in one.
