Fourteen Springs of Separation Quotes

“Mother today had displayed that rustic courage of the country; the free unshackled unrestrained energy that so characterised the earthy Sikh people. A mooring was coming undone in his heart. He was secretly proud of his mother. He might have felt embarrassed at her lack of restraint but he desperately wanted to get some of that raw courage. He could only dream of it. He had a spontaneous vision of an expansive green field stretching acre after acre under a blazing sun. That is where his people got it from.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“She spoke so clearly, so unambiguously, that this directness alone was seditious.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Your mind, son, that is the power you have when your body is in chains. Don’t let them get to your mind. They can chain up your limbs, they can hold you hostage in alien lands, but they can’t stop the flow of your thoughts, your own mind. Hold on to that, son. If you ask me what we ought to salvage, I would say salvage the mind. We can always fill up the Toshakhana, it is the mind that needs to be free of chains.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“They have done me so much wrong. I have found no rest since the day I left Lahore. See these eyes, they are of little use now. See these hands of mine, they tremble. My skin looks now like a shrivelled date. Though my Waheguru knows, that despite these physical infirmities, a rare strength wells up within me when I think of Duleep and Lahore.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“But eventually, a man or a woman is known by what they do with this darkness that fills them at one point or the other, for some more, for some less. But it is inevitable. Do you become diminished in the blanket of this black fog, or you, inch by inch, cut through it—sometimes by will, sometimes by self-delusion.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“He was at a stage in life when pure emotions were becoming elusive.
He had ceased experiencing joy or sorrow in their pure luminosity: what he felt instead was a grey gradient, a cloying stickiness, a jumble of voices, the same experiences appearing good and bad by turns.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“It hit me then, more than ever before, that a strong character needs real struggle to be chiselled, not accepting shallow show of generosity thrown like crumbs at you from time to time.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“I knew education could not deliver me the way music would.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“I feel that to intimately know another person’s life, to love it truly, to care for it, to get involved with it to the extent that is possible for one life to get intertwined with another, will also give you pure knowledge. Maybe not of the world, but certainly of humans and relationships. Being truly committed to someone offers you the chance to feel pure emotions, or so have I realized. Knowing Mai Sahib and getting a chance to serve her, both in the royal zenana and now on the road, has comprised my total education.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“The hallmark of a broken heart is doubt as much as it is grief.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Freedom of the heart and the mind is a splendid thing. It’s no guarantee that a high birth will ensure it, or, for that matter, even a high education. It’s not that ill-treatment will always become a catalyst to rebellion. Scores of ill-treated women retreat more and more into their shell of limitations. It’s not certain that a master or guru will awaken you from that slumber; there is no guarantee about these things. No. You cannot be sure. And then, what all this will not achieve, one quiet moment of insight will.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“What a miracle it was to see my child breastfeed! How God ensures that a mother can assuage her child’s hunger without depending on anything or anyone! It is a great equalizer, for whether you are a drifter on the streets or a queen, it’s all the same.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“In these circumstances, a woman of declining age and beauty is a desperate creature. Desperate to find shards of love. Just the real thing. Her infatuation with baubles and things is long over. What she now needs is the real thing.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“It is not one monumental occasion when the knife of betrayal will cut you. There are moments, more of callous disregard than cruelty. When you realize you are not what you were. You have been taken off that little shrine in their hearts.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“I felt no honor and no beauty, even though I was a queen. There were the frivolities, the attendant charms and the decorations of this life, but nothing really filled my heart.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Your misfortune is not something to be compared with that of others. It is given to you in darkness and it is only yours to embrace, not for anyone else to see.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Love then ceases to touch you. And what is love when it ceases to touch you?”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“There were days I would look at the filigree network of wrinkles on his high forehead: one furrow dug for every battle he had fought since teenage, one wrinkle for every territory he had annexed.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“And like they say, sometimes you have no teacher but your experiences. My experience taught me every day. I blundered my way through but learnt the ropes. I was a woman thrown into a role bigger than me, but I held on to the girl of my childhood—sweet Jindan. Whenever things became too much, whenever I did not have the answer, I sought it in my mind, frolicking in the expanse of my childhood village.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“But to enjoy the festivities, one needs a light heart. A burdened heart, wrapped in the richest of silks, suffers eternally.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Sometimes we end up becoming what we condemned all our lives.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“Over the years, I have chased that glow but in vain. I sometimes feel we don’t chase after new things. Often, while sifting through new attractions, we seek the peace we once knew, living in an unhurried time where we were what we were.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“I wasn’t sure if I was made for great things, but surely, I was made for a great love.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“A naive expectation of love’s grand riches is the high tide over the grim seas of reality.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation

“I had broken out of the prison, but I wasn’t free yet.”
― Sakoon Singh, Fourteen Springs of Separation