Heat and Dust Quotes

“Shortly before the monsoon, the heat becomes very intense. It is said that the more intense it becomes the more abundantly it will draw down the rains, so one wants it to be as hot as can be. And by that time one has accepted it -- not got used to but accepted; and moreover, too worn-out to fight against it, one submits to it and endures.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“The rest of the time Olivia was alone in her big house with all the doors and windows shut to keep out the heat and dust.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“The landscape which, a few weeks earlier, had been blotted out by dust was now hazy with moisture.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“There are certain people who if they are absent life becomes hard to bear. …. These are the people who once sat close to you in Paradise.' It is a beautiful idea, isn't it….”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time -- when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again until the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog -- maybe a jackal -- baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space -- though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my walls to look at and my books to read.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“India always changes people, and I have been no exception.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“Some diseases, even when cured, leave people so unsightly that for the rest of their lives they have to move among their fellows as living examples of all the terrible things that can happen to a man.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“I was given some bits of rock sugar and a few flower petals which I did not of course like to throw away so that I was still clutching them on the bus back to Satipur. When I thought Inder Lal was not looking, I respectfully tipped them out the side of the bus, but they have left the palm of my hand sticky and with a lingering smell of sweetness and decay that is still there as I write.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“There are certain people who if they are absent life becomes hard to bear.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“Although the Major was so sympathetic to India, his piece sounds like a warning. He said that one has to be very determined to withstand--to stand up to--India. And the most vulnerable, he said, are always those who love her best. There are many ways of loving India, many things to love her for...but all, said the Major, are dangerous for the European who allows himself to love too much. India always, he said, finds out the weak spot and presses on it. ...Yes, concluded the Major, it is all very well to love and admire India--intellectually, aesthetically, he did not mention sexually but he must have been aware of that factor too--but always with a virile, measured, European feeling. One should never, he warned, allow oneself to become softened (like Indians) by an excess of feeling; because the moment that happens -- the moment one exceeds one's measure-- one is in danger of being dragged over to the other side. ... He who loved India so much, knew her so well, chose to spend the end of his days here! But she always remained for him an opponent, even sometimes an enemy, to be guarded and if necessary fought against from without and, especially, from within: from within one's own being.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“The others, however, told their anecdotes with no moral comment whatsoever, even though they had to recount some hair-raising events. And not only did they keep completely cool, but they even had that little smile of tolerance, of affection, even enjoyment that Olivia was beginning to know well: like good parents, they all loved India whatever mischief she might be up to.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“Olivia understood that actually they would be happier without her, doing matronly things and being comfortable with each other. But they were speaking for her sake.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“Olivia was by no means a snob but she was aesthetic and the details Mrs. Saunders gave about her illness were not; also Mrs. Saunders' accent--how could one help noticing with her droning on and on?--was not that of a too highly educated person...”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“It is strange how, once graves are broken and overgrown in this way, then the people in them are truly dead. The Indian Christian graves at the front of the cemetery, which are still kept up by relatives, seem by contrast strangely alive, contemporary”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust

“The girl was particularly indignant --not only about this watchman but about all the other people all over India. She said they were all dirty and dishonest. She had a very pretty, open, English face but when she said that it became mean and clenched, and I realised that the longer she stayed in India the more her face would become like that.”
― Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust