Shantaram (Part Five) - Gregory David Roberts

.. I broke off, the words failing, and the thought of Khaled Ansari momentarily bleaching my mind with the mention of his name. It was a white blizzard of emotion storming from the last memory, the last image of him, walking away from the night and the snow.

- On Remembering (800)

The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open

- Origin Undetermined (Karla or Didier) (805)

I heard someone calling me, calling me, calling me back from the edge of the abyss into which Habib, and all those like him, had plunged.

- About the finish the fight with the twin Rajan's. A significant moment (812)

That was the real man, the steel blade within the shabby, rusting scabbard.

- On Didier Levy (813)

Yet that little phrase thundered in my heart, and an avalanche of grieving began to tremble, shift and slide.

- Lin finally grieves at the loss of Kader (833)

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss.

- Assassin Grief (834)

I turned to look at her. The sky in her eyes held tiny storms. Her lips, embossed with secret thoughts, were swollen to the truth she way trying to tell me.

- Lisa Carter confessing her desire to Lin (841)

Evening dimmed the afternoon's bright halo. A haze of dusty smoke and vapour misted the horizon, sizzling soundlessly, as if the sky at the distant wall of the world was dissolving into the waters of the bay. Most of the boats and ferries were safely tied to their mooring posts at the dock beneath me. Others rose and fell and rose again, swaying on the secure tethers of their sea anchors. High tide pushed the swollen waves against the long stone wall where i stood. Here and there along the boulevard, frothy plumes, like gasps of effort, slapped up, over and onto the white footpaths.

- Lin's view from Gateway (851)

I let my heart break on my father's love, like the tall waves beside me that hurled their chests against the wall, and bled onto the wide , white path.

- Lin surrenders to the assassin grief (851)

Fate always gives you two choices, Scorpio George once said: the one you should take, and the one you do (858)

The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance; its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure. have their reason and their right to be.

- Lin, relieving himself of some of the guilt he carries (872)

The more happiness I get from it, the more thoroughly I have to wash my hands afterwards.

- Didier on Money (873)

She once told me that heroes only come in three kinds: dead, damaged or dubious

- Karla once said (882)

There are few things more discomfiting that a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason

- Lin's first meeting with "Jeet" (883)

Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting

- Karla Once said (919)

It is always a fool's mistake, to be alone with someone you shouldn't have loved

- Didier (921)

Every human heartbeat, he'd said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he'd meant. He'd been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuits of the stars. But i suddenly realized that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

- Lin beginning another cycle of life (932)

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world.

- This is what we do (933)

- The End -

Shantaram (Part Four) - Gregory David Roberts

Karla says that depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.

- Karla once said (546)

Foreigners were stared at in India. Somewhere in the five or more millenia of its history, the culture had decided to dispense with the casual, nonchalant glance. By the time I came to Bombay, the eye contact ranged from an ogling gaze to a gawping, goggled-eyed glated. There was nothing malicious in it. The starting eyes that found and followed me everywhere I went were innocent, curious, and almost always friendly.

- Don't even bother trying to deny it :) (549)

Kaderbhai once said that every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret. It mighn't be true of everyone, but it was true enough about me. The little good that i've done in the world has always dragged behind it a shadow of dark inspiration. What i do know now, and didn't know then is that, in the long run, motive matters more with good deeds than it does with bad. When all the guilt and shame for the bad we've done have run their course, its the good we did that can save us. But then, when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept, and the motives we concealed, creep from their shadows. They cling to us, those dark motives for our good deeds. Redemptions climb is steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame.

- Lin, on his attempts to help Anand too late (563)

Its okay, Karla once said, because if we learned what we should learn, the first time round, we wouldn't need love at all.

- Karla once said (588)

Pity is the one part of love that asks for nothing in return and because of that, every act of pity is a kind of prayer.

- I'm not sure what he means by a "kind of prayer" (595)

I told Prabhakar, sitting in his cab and watching him cry, that love makes men big, and hate makes them small. I told him that my little friend was one of the biggest men i ever met because there wasn't any hate in him.

- Lin soothing Prabhakars performance anxiety (601)

Kaderbhai once said that if we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're halfway to wisdom. I hope he wasn't right about that. I hope good envy takes you further than that, because a lifetime has passed since that day at the wire, and I still envy Anand's calm communion with fate, and long for it with all my flawed and striving heart.

- Lin after meeting Anand in the Arthur Road jail (607)

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them , even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabhakar. And sometimes my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.

- Losing Prabhakar (629)

A mujaheddin fighter once told me that fates gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we've loved them, left them, or fought them.

- Lin's loneliness after losing Abdullah and Prabhakar at the same time (633)

All horse good, all man not good

- Nazeer, with the truest words ever spoken (658)

Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong -- that we do not lie to ourselves and convince ourselves that what we do is right.

- One of the key theorems in Abdul Kader Khan's Theory of Resolution (709)

"These afghans may not be the best men in the world to live with...but they are certainly the best men in the world to die with"

- Ahmed Zadeh, grateful for the undaunted spirit of the Afghan Mujaheddin (716)

It was just that all the hope had been so empty, so meaningless. And if you prove to a man how vain his hope is, how vain his hoping was, you kill the bright, believing part of him that wants to be loved.

- Lin, learning Kader would not have freed him from jail earlier than was convenient (737)

They'd lied to me and betrayed me, leaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and I didn't like or respect or admire them any more, but still I loved them. I had no choice I understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. You can't kill love. You can't even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness.....Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: its a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.

- Lin's steps closer to figuring life out, while his illusions come crashing down (740)

Men wage wars for profit and principle, but they fight them for land and women. Sooner or later, the other causes and compelling reasons drown in blood and lose their meaning. Sooner or later, death and survival clog the senses. Sooner or later, surviving is the only logic, and dying is the only voice and vision. Then, when best friends die screaming, and good men maddened with pain and fury lose their minds in the bloody pit, when all the fairness and justice and beauty in the world is blown away with arms and legs and heads of brothers and sons and fathers, then , what makes men fight on, and die, and keep on dying, year after year, is the will to protect the land and the women.

- Lin, the day before his attempted exit from Afghanistan(741)

Luka Chuppi

song    - लुका-छुपी
movie   - रंग दे बसंती
music   - A R Rahman
lyrics  - Prasoon Joshi
singers - Lata, A R रहमान

This song took some time to crawl into the back of my head and wiggle its way into the "permanentfavourites" section of my cranium, but now i wonder why it was such a struggle. The effect of the song is, as in most Bollywood songs, due it its context in the movie. An inspired movie, an inspired point in the movie and a song that takes the point and drives it straight into your heart.

Rahman weaves his magic with the tune, but then tries his best to ruin it by singing. Every time I hear his voice I initially cringe, but fix this by singing louder than him, thereby negating the effect of his voice/accent.

This really doesn't need an explanation or a translation, i just wanted to put this down for posterity.

लुका-छुपी

लता:

लुका-छुपी बहुत हुई
सामने आजा ना
कहान-कहान ढ़ूँडा  तुझे
थाके है अब तेरी माँ
आजा सांझ हुई मुझे तेरी फिकर
धून्धला गई देख मेरी नज़र
आजा ना

रहमान:
क्या बताऊँ माँ कहान हूँ मैं
यहाँ उड़ने को मेरे खुला आस्मां है
तेरे किस्सों जैसा भोला
सलोना जहान है यहाँ सपनो वाला
मेरी पतंग हो बेफिकर उड़ रही है माँ
डोर कोई लूटे नही बीच से काटे ना

लता:
तेरी राह तके अखियाँ
जाने कैसा-कैसा होए जिया
धीरे-धीरे आकर उतरे अँधेरा 
तेरा दीप कहाँ
ढल के सूरज करे इशारा
चन्दा तू है कहाँ
मेरे चन्दा तू है कहाँ

रहमान:
कैसे तुझको दिखाऊन यहाँ है क्या
मैंने झरने से पानी माँ तोड़ के पीया है
गुच्छा-गुच्छा कई ख्वाबों का
उछल के छुआ है
छाया लिए भली धूप यहाँ है
नया-नया सा है रूप यहाँ
यहाँ सब कुछ है माँ फिर भी
लगे बिन तेरे मुझको अकेला

Shantaram (Part Three) - Gregory David Roberts

"We have a saying, in the Pashto language, and the meaning of it is that you are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return"

- Kaderbhai consoling Lin on his loss of Tariq (353)

Some of the worst things, Karla once said, were caused by people who tried to change things

- Karla (367)

What characterizes the human race more, Karla once asked me , cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it? I thought the question acutely clever then, when i first heard it, but I'm lonelier and wiser now, and i know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are.....without that [], there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

- Lin, reflecting on the "saving" of Joseph (370)

I smoked in those days, because, like everyone in the world who smokes, I wanted to die at least as much as I wanted to live

- Lin (371)

But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean in her body. And not only this. our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.

- Johnny Cigar, reflecting at the Colaba Back Bay (374)

Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart, Kaderbhai once told me, and every risk we take contains a mystery that can't be solved.

- Kaderbhai (415)

Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but its worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in the end.

- Lin, worrying about his past catching up with him at Arthur Road(426)

If babies had wings, he'd be the kind that pulled them off

- Lettie about Maurizio (428)

The worst things that people do to us always make us feel ashamed. The worst things that people do always strike at the part of us that wants to love the world. And a tiny part of the shame we feel, when we're violated, is shame at being human.

- Lin, on his chains at Arthur Road (432)

None of us lie or guard our secrets when we sing, and India is a nation of singers whose first love is the kind of song we turn to when crying just isn't enough.

- Lin, on his release from prison (439)

Khaled, my first teacher, was the kind of man who carried his past in the temple fire of his eyes, and fed the flames with pieces of his broken heart.

- Lin's new life of crime (443)

There's a little arrogance at the heart of every better self. That arrogance left me when I failed to save my neighbour's life - failed even to know that she was ill. And there's an innocence, essential and unblinking, in the heart of every determination to serve. That innocence faltered when i stumbled from the Indian prison: my smile, no less than my footsteps, hobbled by the memory of the leg-irons. Moving out of the slum had as much or more to do with the state of my soul as it did with the wounds on my body.

- Lin putting in words what I didn't think could be put into words (451)

Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn't, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find outselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And its impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love.

- see above comment (471)

Kaderbhai expounding on his "Grand Resolution Theory", the objectivity of Good v/s Evil, and about how we sometime do the wrong things....for the right reasons

- (478-486)

Karla once said that men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, she said, its the other way around.

- Karla (487)

Madjid Rhustem was simply the kind of man who thought that smiling was an act of will

- Lin's tutor in the Gold trade (490)

People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore.

- Karla on love (504)

No politcal philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves.

- Lin philosophy, before life had it's say (509)

Its a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but i didn't read them. I loved her voice, but didn't really hear the fear and anguish in it.

- Lin on being a fool in love (511)

I stopped the bike and shielded my eyes to look for her. But she way gone. There was nothing but the waves breaking like the curved spines of playful porpoises, and the traceless, empty, tousled sheets of sand.

- Lin, on leaving Goa and Karla (514)

Shantaram (Part Two) - Gregory David Roberts

'I'll do it', i said. I tried to sound confident and strong, but there are some lies that the body just won't believe, and the words came out in a squeak.

- Lin's escape (174)

"The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance", Didier once said "is that it works so well"

- Didier's widsom (186)

There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the poor

- Abdullah quotes Karla, while walking to the Haji Ali masjid (189)

We have a saying in Persian - Sometimes a lion must roar just to remind the horse of its fear

- Abdullah again (189)

"There is not a lot more you can do for someone than die for them" I replied, grinning at his earnestness as much as the strangeness of his idea.
"Oh yes", he said, putting an arm around my shoulder and let me back towards the car. "There is a lot more"

- continuing the conversation with Abdullah

'There is no believing in God, ' he declared, smiling again. 'We either know god or we do not'
...
'Oh of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists'
He was staring at me intently, his hand still resting warm on my arm. Be careful, i thoughts. You're getting into a philosophical discussion with a man who's famous for them. He's testing you. Its a test, and the water's deep.
'Let me get this straights -- you're saying that because something is impossible it exists?' I asked, pushing a canoe of thought out into the unchartered water of his ideas.
.....
I will explain. Nothing exists as we see it. Nothing we see is really there, as we think we are seeing it. Our eyes are liars. Everything that seems real is merely part of the illusion. Nothing exists, as we think it does. Not you. Not me. Not this room. Nothing.
....
'Let me put it another way. The agents of creation, the energy that actually animates the matter and life that we think we see around us, cannot be measured or weighed or even put into time, as we know it. In one form, that energy is photons of light. the smallest object is a universe of open space to them, and the entire universe is but a speck of dust. What we call the world is just an idea -- and not a very good one, yet. From the point of view of the light, the photon of light that animates it, the universe that we know is not real. Nothing is.'
..
'We lie', he said with a flash of real humour in the golf-flecked amber of his eyes. 'The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man'
.....
'What I am saying is that reality -- as you see it, and as most people see it -- is nothing more than an illusion. There is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyes. You have to feel your way into that reality with your heart. There is no other way'
....
'All you have to do is close your eyes. We can know God, for example, and we can sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exists in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.'
My canoe of thoughts was taking water, and i decided to bail out, fast.
......
' I said that truth is more often found in music', he repeated, ' than it is in books of philosophy'

'What is the truth?' I asked him, I didn't really want to know. I was trying to hold up my end of the conversation. I was trying to be clever.

'The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. ' It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men -- it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone -- the noblest man alive or the most wicked -- has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy and every particle of matter in the universe, moving towards God.'

- Khaderbhai (196-201)

And as i watched her, she began to cry. The tears, when they came, slipped from her closed eyelids like so many beads on a prayer chain. Some women cry easily. The tears fall as gently as fragrant raindrops in a sun-shower, and leave the face clear and clean and almost radiant. Other women cry hard, and all the loveliness in them collapses in the agony of it. Karla was such a woman. There was terrible anguish written in the rivulets of those tears and the torment that creased her face.

- Karla's tears at Madame Zhou's Palace (280)

It was a room of diligently austere splendour

- Kaderbhai's Council's meeting room (286)

"Abdul has a pet theory, Lin", said Khaled, the dour Palestinian. 'He believes that certain men are cursed with qualities, such as great courage, that make them commit desperate acts. He calls it the hero curse, the thing that complels them to leaed other men to bloodshed and chaos"

- Abdul Ghani's theory about the Hero Curse (294)

"I think that happiness is a really thing, a truly thing, but it is what makes us crazy people. Happiness is so strange and power a thing that is makes us to be sick, like a germ sort of thing. And suffering is what cures us of it, the too much happiness. The -- how do you say it, bhari vazan"

- Farid's interpretation on Suffering : The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering (296)

"I think that suffering is the way we test our love. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonizingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God."....
...."Pain and suffering are connected, but they are not the same thing. Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain." ....
... "The difference between them is this, I think; that what we learn from pain - for example, that fire burns and is dangerous - is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. If we do not suffer with out pain, then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. Pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. We do not learn from it what makes us stronger or better or closer to God" .....
...." Suffering is exactly like happiness, but backwards. One is the mirror image of the other, and has no real meaning or existence without the other."

- Kaderbhai's take on the topic under discussion, Suffering (298)

"Is easy - suffering is hungry, isn't it? Hungry for anything, means suffering. Not hungry for something, means not suffering. But everybody knows that"

- Prabhakar breaks it down for Lin (302)

"Hurt!", Johnny boomed happily. "Pain is no problem, Lin. Good you have pains, Ameer, you chutia. Pains in your brains, you should be having"

- Johnny Cigar wanting Ameer to pay for his gunda gardi (305)

People always hurt us with their trust, Karla said to me once. The surest way to hurt someone you like is to put all your trust in him.

- Karla (306)

I thought him ugly, then, when i first knew him, not so much for the unbeautiful set of his features as for their joylessness. It seemed to me that i'd never seen a human face in which the smile has been so utterly defeated.

- Lin's early impressions of Nazeer, Kaderbhai's sworn man (321)

I shook hands with him, his small hand vanishing in mine. Nothing ever fits the palm so perfectly, or feels so right, or inspires so much protective instinct as the hand of a child

- Lin's introduction to Tariq, Kaderbhai's nephew (323)

"I thought you didn't like Kids"
"I don't. They're so.... innocent. Except that they're not. They know exactly what the want, and they don't stop till they get it. It's disgusting. All the worst people I know are just like big , grown-up children. It's so creepy it makes me sick to my stomach"

- A mildly contrasting view from Lisa Carter (329)

Karla always tells the truth.......even when she's lying

- Lisa Carter remembering what Karla once told her (333)

The truth was that i belonged nowhere and to no-one. Surrounded by people and hungry for solitude, I was always and everywhere alone. I was hollow, empty, gouged out and scraped bare by the escape and the flight. I'd lost my family, the friends of my youth, my country and its culture - all the things that had defined me, and given me identity. Like all the fugitive kind, the more successful I was, the longer and further i ran, the less i kept of myself.

- Lin (334)

Now we both know
Sorrows are the seeds of loving

- From the poem in Karla's journal (337)

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.

- End of Part Two (346)

Shantaram (Part One) - Gregory David Roberts

While it has been my long standing belief that too close an examination of anything beautiful will reveal flaws inherent and invisible to the romantically inclined, for the first time in my life i feel like I have experienced something truly life-changing.

Something of that magnitude, bears as close an examination as one is capable of, to truly impact said life. I embark on this project with a healthy dose of trepidation, and with a silent prayer that "Shantaram" comes out of this examination retaining that lofty position it holds in my head.

You break down a Chemistry text book because on first reading, it appears to be magic. On continual re-reading, the words take on an almost pedestrian attitude. Why someone would want to do that to literature, i never understood; Until Now.

I am hoping to document every interesting (at-second-look) sentence/para/quote from the book, and hopefully whittle it down to a choice few that have a special relevance to me.



Fate needs accomplices, and the stones in destiny's walls are mortared with small and heedless complicities such as these

- On being christened "Lin" by Prabhaker

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.

- On NOT telling Karla something

And beyond these reflections as always, in fixed orbits around the sphere of my solitude, were thoughts of my family and my friends. Endless, unreachable. Every night was twisted around the unquenchable longing of what my freedom had cost me, and all that was lost

- His first (sleepless) night in Mumbai (34)

The world and I are not on speaking terms. The world keeps trying to win me back, but it doesn't work. I guess i'm just not the forgiving type

- Something Karla once said (37)

My heart moved through deep and silent waters.. . . . I was tough, which is probably the saddest thing you can say about a man

- Looking for something he shared with Karla (37)

Love is the opposite of power. Thats why fear it so much

- Karla on why love isn't the "best thing in the world"(39)

"Its my favourite place in the world", Karla once said, "to be treated like dirt"

- Something Karla once said about Leo's - MY favourite place in the world (40)

And writing was one of the things that saved me, the discipline of putting my life into words, every day, helped me to cope with shame, and its first cousin, despair

- On surviving (43)

"There is a difference between the dishonest bride and the honest bribe", Didier Levy once said to me, " The dishonest bribe is the same in every country. The honest bribe is India's alone"

- On India's ethics (47)

We have a saying in Marseilles; A man in no hurry gets nowhere fast

- Didier imparting wisdom (50)

Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, not by what we permit

- more pearls from Didier (52)

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like

- Karla once said (60)

The story of the scorpion and the frog. It is, after all, the nature of the scorpion to sting.

- Karla (62 - not a quote)

Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw out your pride to keep it afloat and your self-respect and independence. After a while you start throwing people out. Your friends, everyone you know. The lifeboat is still sinking, and its going to take you down with it.

- Karla's take on Love (63)

Kai Garam mad'chud

- Comment inspired by Lin's Marathi

This is not like any other place. This is India. Everyone who comes here falls in love - most of us fall in love many times over. And the Indians, they love most of all. Your little friend may be beginning to love you......

- Didier clarifying Prabhaker's feelings for Lin (85)

Optimism is the first cousin of love, and its exactly like love in three ways; its pushy, it has no real sense of humor and it turns up where you least expect it.

- On Ulla's inexplicable lack of cynicism (90)

The real trick in life is to want nothing, and succeed in getting it

- Karla's friend on not "wanting everything" (96)

I think wisdom is overrated. Wisdom is just cleverness with all the guts kicked out of it

- Karla would rather be clever than wise (99)

Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your sould can do the crying for you

- On finally realizing the magnitude of his loss (124)

When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare

- The situation that brings Lin to the slum reminds him of one of Didier's ramblings (150)

The baba's were also comprehensively, celestially and magnificently stoned

- On the standing baba's (152)

I'd only give you advice if i didnt care about what happens to you

- Karla's parting words before Lin moved into the slum (157)

Waiting for nothing, that is what kills the heart of a man, isn't it

- Prabhakar explaining the patience of Lin's newly acquired patients(166)

If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke

- Karla once said (167)

. . . . . .somewhere in the landscape of the slum dwellers reassurances, somehow through the fact of our survival, their world enfolded my life within its dreams, as gently and completely as a swollen tide closes over a stone that stands upon its shores

- The eventful beginning to his life in the zhopadpatti (168)

Hazaron kwaahishen Aisi

Song: Haazaron Khwaahishen Aisi
Lyrics: Ghalib
Singer: Jagjit Singh
Album: The Inimitable Composer

Haazaron khwaahishen aisi ke har khwaahish pe dam nikle,
Bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle.

Thousands of desires, each one to die for,
Many a wish have I realised; yet they werent enough

Nikalna khuld se aadam, ka sunte aae the lekin,
Bahut be aabroo ho kar tere koochhe se ham nikle.

Often have we heard about Adam's exile from Eden,
much more despondent was my exit from your door.

Mohabbat mein nahi hai farq jeene aur marne ka
Us hi ko dekh kar jeetey hai, jis kafir pe dam nikle

There is little difference in life and death when we are in love,
The same infidel sustains our life, for whom we pine to die.

Khuda ke vaaste parda nakaabe se utha zalim,
kahin aisa na ho, yaan bhi vahi kafir sanam nikale

In his presence, take off the veil that hides your deceitfulness
It shouldnt happen that even in heaven, my lover turns out to be you

Kahaan maikhana ka darwaaza Ghalib, aur kahaan waiz,
Par itna jante hain kal woh jaata tha ke ham nikle.

The preacher and the tavern door are things wide apart,
Yet yesterday I saw him enter, as I was coming out.

Haazaron kwaahishen aisi ke har khwaahish pe dam nikle,
Bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi dam nikle.

Thousands of desires, tantalizing one and all,
Many a wish have I realised; yet I yearn for more.

This is a true testament to this mans voice and his mastery of it.
also, Notice, he says Khwaahish, not simply khwaaish.
goosepimples. everytime.

Hum Dono

This is a great movie. with outstanding songs.

To truly understand the connection between these two songs, you have to watch the movie.
I cant stand Dev saab, but the plot can turn a ham into a believable actor.


Song: Abhi na jaao chhod kar

abhee naa jaao chhodakar, ke dil abhee bharaa nahee

abhee abhee to aayee ho, bahaar ban ke chhaayee ho
hawaa jaraa mahak to le, najar jaraa bahak to le
ye shaam dhal to le jaraa, ye dil sanbhal to le jaraa
mai thodee der jee to loo, nashe ke ghoont pee to loo
abhee to kuchh kahaa nahee, abhee to kuchh sunaa naheen ..

sitaare zilameelaa uthhe, charaag zagamagaa uthhe
bas ab naa muz ko tokanaa, n badh ke raah rokanaa
agar main ruk gayee abhee, to jaa n paaoongee kabhee
yahee kahoge tum sadaa, ke dil abhee naheen bharaa
jo khatm ho kisee jagah, ye ayesaa silasilaa naheen ..

adhuree aans chhod ke, adhuree pyaas chhod ke
jo roj yoon hee jaaogee, to kis tarah nibhaaogee
ke jindagee kee raah me, jawaan dilon kee chaah me
kaee makaam aayenge, jo hum ko aajamaayenge
buraa naa maano baat kaa, ye pyaar hain gilaa nahee
yahee kahoge tum sadaa, ke dil abhee bharaa nahee



Song:Jahan mein aisa kaun hai


dukh aur sukh ke raaste, bane hain sab ke waasate
jo ghum se haar jaaoge, to kis tarah nibhaaoge
khushee mile humey ke ghum jo hogaa baant lenge hum
mujhe tum aazamao to, zaraa nazar milaao to....zaraa nazar milaao to
ye jism do sahee magar, dilon mein faasalaa nahee

jahaan mein ayesaa kaun hai, ke jis ko gam milaa nahee

tumhaare pyaar kee kasam tumhaaraa gam hain meraa gam
na yoo bujhe bujhe raho, jo dil kee baat hain kaho
jo mujh se bhi chhupaaoge, to fir kise bataaoge
main koee gair to nahee, dilaaoo kis tarah yakeen
ke tum se main judaa nahee, muz se tum judaa nahee



ke tum se main judaa nahi, mujh se tum judaa nahi *sigh*

Tere khushboo mein base khat

This is just a few lines recited by Jagjit Singh

Name : Tere khushboo mein base khat main jalaata kaise
Sung By : Jagjit Singh
Lyricist: Rajinder Nath Rehbar

tere khushboo mein base khat main jalaata kaise
pyaar mein doobe hue khat, main jalaata kaise
tere haathon ke likhe khat, main jalaata kaise
tere khat main aaj ganga mein baha aaya hoon
aag behete hue paani mein lagaa aaya hoon