Have you been reading those books that clueless illiterate UJA in charge of the lending library lets you borrow?’ ‘No, Ma.’ ‘Then what put you in mind of devils possessing nuns to take over the church?

— Renita D'Silva

He could not help but admire his posters every time he saw them---the son of a rickshaw puller, now the chief of a prominent political party in this town, who was expected to win by an unprecedented margin of votes in the coming elections. There were many people in the party who begrudged his presence, his power, but they could do nothing. The people of Arthur loved him and his speeches. Some people called them inflammatory, divisive, and harmful to the peace and harmony of the town. A smile spread across his face every time he heard that word. Has anything ever been achieved by harmony? What would the leaders do with harmony? Why would people come to listen to his speeches in droves if they wanted harmony? Elections can never be won by harmony.

— Rohit Gore

If Allah has willed it that way... He must have better plans for you child...

— K. Hari Kumar

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajah. The music is a river, and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

It’s beyond your consciousness that your soul lingers with the person you love and hence your mood will affect the one you love. This is the reason why you sometimes sense your mood changing mysteriously with no reason.

— Udai Yadla

I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.

— Renita D'Silva

I watched the rows and rows of chap pals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?

— Renita D'Silva

.now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Angle poised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

— Salman Rushdie

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.

— Mahendra Jakhar

She liked the way a ray of mild autumn sun infiltrating the thick cluster of trees caught a reddish orange leaf swirling in the wind and transformed it golden yellow. She liked that it wasn’t a leaf she recognized, that she could name or associate with her past.

— Renita D'Silva