The Far Field Quotes

“I am aware that I am taking no risks by recounting any of this, that, for people like me, safe and protected, even the greatest risk is, ultimately, indulgence”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“This country, already ancient when I was born in 1982, has changed every instant I’ve been alive. Titanic events have ripped it apart year after year, each time rearranging it along slightly different seams and I have been touched by none of it: prime ministers assassinated, peasant-guerrillas waging war in emerald jungles, fields cracking under the iron heel of a drought, nuclear bombs catering the wide desert floor, lethal gases blasting from pipes and into ten thousand lungs, mobs crashing against mobs and always coming away bloody. Consider this: even now, at this very moment, people are huddled in a room somewhere, wanting to die. This is what I have told myself for the last six years, each time I have had the urge to speak. It will make no difference in the end.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“What I am, what I was, and what I have done—all of these will become clear soon enough.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“And it is true you write in Urdu, Kashmiri, and English?”
“My daughter talks too much,” he said, evidently pleased. “But she is correct. I find that different languages are useful for different things. For instance, it is best to write poetry in Urdu. Urdu words are made for poetry and songs. For stories, Kashmiri is the best.”
“And English?”
“English?” He smiled. “English is excellent for signboards and maps.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“had never been nostalgic people. Growing up, my drawings did not find a place on the fridge,”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I don’t know when my allegiance shifted, when I went from being his to being hers.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I see us as we were then, standing eye to eye, laboring hard under the illusion that we were cynical and cold, that our respective tragedies had inured us, put us permanently beyond the reach of further suffering, when the truth was that we were as terrified and lost as babies.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“...cynical and hardened as I believed myself to be at twenty-four, I had never that pity might, in fact, be just another facet of love.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“Hari allowed me the simple luxury of resistance. He allowed me to push back—in a way that was small and mean and unworthy, yes, but nevertheless to push back—against a world that had shown me it could beat me down whenever it wanted.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I had yet to understand just how many shapes a person’s desire could take, and how few of them, in the end, took the shape of the body.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I suspect the truth was that, like so many who cloak themselves in mistrust and call it independence, I was merely a coward.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I can’t live your life for you, Shalini. You have to decide how you want to live, the way I did. It’s as simple as that.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“troubled wonder, the kind I imagine a parent feels for a grown child: pride, combined with the bittersweet notion that I had somehow, without noticing, without meaning to, lost him.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“It’s hard not to wonder how much might have been prevented if only I had loved him more, or, perhaps, loved her a little less. But that is useless thinking, and perilous. Better to let things stand as they were: she, my incandescent mother, and I, her little beast.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“Likewise, my mother never insisted that I prostrate myself or learn the names of her gods, though I sometimes wish she had. She never forbade me from joining either, but it was implicit.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“It was only when she prayed in front of her idols that she shrank, became a person with ordinary dimensions.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“Well, you do talk a lot,” she said thoughtfully. “But if you’re going to be working all day, I suppose I won’t have to listen to most of it.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“Three years of a master’s degree at Columbia left him with a fondness for America, especially her jazz, her confidence, and her coffee, which, he liked to say happily, was the worst he’d ever tasted.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“That’s not why I came here. I came here”—I paused—“because I wanted to see you. That’s all. I missed you when she died, and I wanted to see you again.” I paused, then added, “I loved you. We all did.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“I suspected he was testing me, trying to wear me out, so the few times he turned, I forced myself to walk erect, a careless half smile pasted to my face. As soon as his back was turned, though, I slumped over like an abandoned puppet.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“there were no images of screaming, angry crowds; no shots of policemen and soldiers advancing slowly shoulder go shoulder; no bodies sprawled in the street; no blazing houses. It was as if it weren't happening at all.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“When something big happens, whatever it is, I understand that a person's first tendency is to freeze, to go numb and wait for something else, equally big, to come along and cancel out the first thing. Believe me, I understand. And I know that's what you're doing. But that's the mistake, don't you see? It's faulty logic. There is no second thing. At least, not externally. There is, however, action. Action is the second thing. Without action, there is only waiting for death.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“Kashmir, the ponderous head that had always seemed too much for its awkward, tapering body.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“We stood near the doorway, wedged between the blazing mouth of the electric crematorium and the March heat. The only breeze came from Stella’s son, who kept spinning the red rotors of a toy helicopter.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field

“We stood near the doorway, wedged between the blazing mouth of the electric crematorium and the March heat.”
― Madhuri Vijay, The Far Field