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The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England QUOTES

The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England QUOTES

1 " And fortunately for me, neither of my parents would have known what you were talking about if you mentioned that modern and grossly overworked epithet 'racist'. To Tacklow, as with the early Greeks and Romans, and in their day the Venetians, all men were 'people' irrespective of race or color: there were good people and bad ones, nice or nasty ones, clever or stupid ones, interesting or boring ones - plus all the degrees that range between those poles. But all the same. Just 'people'. His fellow men. "

― , The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

2 " I can still remember the shock that a small girl, brought up to believe that lying was a major sin, experienced on hearing such a loved and admired grown-up calmly admitting to telling lies as though it did not matter at all! It stood all my ideas of morality on their heads and left me totally bewildered. But it taught me an early and valuable lesson: that people of different nationalities do not necessarily hold similar views or think in the same way -just as they do not worship the same God or conform to the same laws. If the Khan Sahib felt it was all right for his people to tell lies, then it must be right -for them. But that didn't mean it was all right for me, for I was an Angrezi (English) and Angrezis obviously thought differently. "

― , The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

3 " I, however, had not been too late. It has been my great good fortune to see India when that once fabulously beautiful land was as lovely, and to a great extent as peaceful and unspoiled, as Eden before the Fall. To live for two years in Peking in an old Chinese house, once the property of a Manch Prince, at a time when the citizens of that country still wore their national costumes instead of dressing up - or down! - in dull Russian-style "uniforms. To have visited Japan before war, the Bomb and the American occupation altered it beyond recognition, when the sight of a Japanese woman in European dress was unusual enough to make you turn and stare... "

― , The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

4 " I saw on the crest a lone pavilion; a little chatri, it's slender pillars and graceful dome dark against the yellow dawn: the last lonely remnant of some forgotten city. And to me at that moment the sight of the little ruined chatri seemed the personification of India and History and Romance. It still does; for I have never forgotten it. But on that particular morning it was also a reminder of all that I was leaving behind; and watching it grow smaller and smaller as the train raced on, I knew that even if I was fortunate enough to come back again one day, nothing was ever going to be the same. Because I could only come back as a grown-up. "

― , The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

5 " One thing I learned during our last few days in Delhi was that Time, which can so often move as slowly as a slug crossing a dusty road, can also move with the swiftness of cloud shadows on a windy day. "

― , The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England