Indian Wisdom

“Sachin has been an integral part of Mumbai Indians and a source of inspiration for the team ever since the inception.”

“Thomas Builds-the-Fire's stories climbed into your clothes like sad, gave you itches that could not be scratched. If you repeated eve a sentence from one of those stories, your throat was never the same again. Those stories hung in your clothes and hair like smoke, and no amount of laundry soap or shampoo washed them out. Victor and Junior often tried to beat those stories out of Thomas, tied him down and taped his mouth shut. They pretended to be friendly and tried to sweet talk Thomas into temporary silences, made promises about beautiful Indian women and cases of Diet Pepsi. But none of that stopped Thomas, who talked and talked.”

“Every day I would run to the library to get new books. Reading was a passion: I wanted to understand life. I read Dostoevsky and Brehm, Jules Verne and Turgenev, Dickens and the Zhivopisnoye Obozreniye; and the more I read, th emore I doubted everything. Lies surrounded me on all sides; one moment I wanted to run off to the Indian jungle, the next to throw a bomb at the governor-general's house on Tverskaya, the next to hang myself.”

“Few Indians realise that the shift towards a market economy requires us to be alert and to fight for our rights and very few of us are willing to spare the time or money for such battles.”

“I recounted my adventures, just as I recount them to you now. I told him about Bombay, which glowed in the night like a lamp. I told him about Bangalore, about the beaches of Goa, of Pune, where elaborate retirement homes and ashrams ringed India’s ferociously competitive colleges, and liberals went to experience transcendence without getting their feet dirty. I told him of places you could expand your mind and still be within walking distance of the nearest McDonalds.”

“Indians are first class people suffering from third class governance.”

“Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?”

“In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds.”

“Policemen are often confronted with situations which baffle them at first. A certain crime scene may seem meaningless, but they have to derive some meaning out of it. They have to connect the dots, find the links, delve into its history, look for evidence, come up with a zillion theories and arrive at truth. The thing is, truth is always stranger than fiction.”

“I like Indian takeaway.”

“Chana dal are skinless dried split chickpeas used in Indian cooking. They have a great texture and delicate flavour.”

“From childhood I have played for India. I have represented India. I have always been a proud Indian.”

“It has been my dream to feature on Billboard's list, as I always wanted to make music for India that will make to that list. I have always wanted to take Indian music to an international platform someday, even if it is on number 100.”

“If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance number in Kashmir. Kashmir was India's fairyland. Indians went there because in a hot country you go to a cold place. People would be entranced by the sight of snow.”

“Indian nouns are extremely connotive; that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs - in denoting the object, it also assigns to it some quality or characteristic.”

“As a contemporary Indian woman who has been handling so many things, I think she can be a very strong woman, a very strong working woman. We need more and more working women in our country.”

“I knew that all South Indian language films were first made in Chennai and that Tamil Nadu is one of the biggest film-producing centres in the country. I wanted to be part of films here.”

“Indian hotels are doing well globally because they understand hospitality.”

“Just as I was about to close my eyes I saw a faint line connecting the shadows, like string you take into a forest so you don’t lose your way. Everything in the room was joined by one line; the frame to the curtain, the coil to the crack, the belt to the shoe. I closed my eyes and in the vision behind the skin of my lids I saw the line stretch way out to sea, like cobweb blown by the wind, further and further; it crossed the Pacific until the Pacific became the Indian and it found Robby in his ship. It touched his shoulder and moved across the sleeve of his shirt and up to his eyes and across the top of his head and then the line went to all the other men on the ship; then all the way back to me. Everyone was joined.”

“I have stopped having goals. If you have many goals, and you don't reach your goals, it is very upsetting, so I just think of keeping it simple, working hard and going and playing the game. But I know there are going to be very important series for Indian cricket. I will just try my best to be in my fittest form.”