01c. 1952 AD…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
02c. 1952 AD...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
03c. 1952 ADYou see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
04c. 1952 ADBirth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
05c. 1952 AD...I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom - it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors' lectures.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
06c. 1952 ADWhat an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
07c. 1952 ADPeople forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
08c. 1952 ADLook at that crowd', he said disgustedly. 'They think it's a circus.''And not a single coin are they donating', said Dina.'That's not surprising. Pity can only be shown in small doses. When so many beggars are in one place, the public goes like this' - he put his fists to his eyes, like binoculars.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
09c. 1952 ADDistance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
10c. 1952 ADRemembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
11c. 1952 ADBlack money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
12c. 1952 ADThe pavement artist thought for a bit, then agreed. 'I can start tomorrow morning.''Good, good. But one question. Will you be able to draw enough to cover 300 feet? I mean, do you know enough different gods to fill the whole wall?'The artist smiled. 'There is no difficulty. I can cover 300 miles if necessary. Using assorted religions and their gods, saints, and prophets. Hindu, Sikh, Judaic, Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Jainist. Actually, Hinduism alone can produce enough. But I always like to mix them up, include a variety in my drawings. Makes me feel I am doing something to promote tolerance and understanding in the world.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
13c. 1952 ADThe future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden time. If one could only reverse it, turn the past into future, and catch it on the wing, on its journey across the always shifting line of the present ...Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
14c. 1952 AD...loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence...Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
16c. 1952 ADNarayan explained how they had spent the morning, and Dukhi laughed to hear it. the entire episode made Radha furious. "Why must you torment the boy? There is no need to make my Om do such dirty work."..."How will he appreciate what he has if he does not learn what his forefathers did? Once a week he will come with me! Whether he likes it or not!Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
17c. 1952 ADCurious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception...and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
18c. 1952 ADThe return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
19c. 1952 ADDid life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungusRohinton Mistry / quote ↗
20c. 1952 ADDepression is a red herring," said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
21c. 1952 ADBut the artist began to have misgivings as the wall underwent its transformation. Bigger than any pavement project he had yet undertaken, it made him restless. Over the years, a precise cycle had entered the rhythm of his life, the cycle of arrival, creation, and obliteration. Like sleeping, waking and stretching, or eating, digesting and excreting, the cycle sang in harmony with the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. He learned to disdain the overlong sojourn and the procrastinated departure, for they were the progenitors of complacent routine, to be shunned at all costs. The journey -- chanced, unplanned, solitary -- was the thing to relish.Now, however, his old way of life was being threatened. The agreeable neighborhood and the solidity of the long, black wall were reawakening in him the usual sources of human sorrow: a yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he could call his own....Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
22c. 1952 ADManeck studied beggermaster's excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did human do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else's. A little annoyance they acted like gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle will do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
23c. 1952 ADIn those days," continued Ishvar, "it seemed to me that that was all one could expect in life. A harsh road strewn with sharp stones and, if you were lucky, a little grain.""And later?""Later I discovered there were different types of roads. And a different way of walking on each.Rohinton Mistry / quote ↗
24c. 1952 ADThe joy and laughter and youth they brought was an antidote to the somberness enveloping his flat, the hours when he felt the very walls and ceilings were encrusted with the distress of of unhappy decadesRohinton Mistry / quote ↗
