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1 " The starved beast, sensing the prey, was restless. "
― Mukta Singh-Zocchi , The Thugs & a Courtesan
2 " You could not love me for I am a man with a hideous face, but what baffles me is that you cared nought for the fact that my thoughts are not inelegant? "
3 " How often he had felt that living life is nothing more than writing on the surface of the lake! So fleeting! Ephemeral! Although each day when it arrives seems like the day that has just passed, it does hold well the power to bring something new or to take away someone dear. "
4 " All of a sudden a strong wind from the west came to visit them. For a short duration, sand blew in the air and filled the eyes of anyone stranded outside, blinding him, the leaves on the trees strived to tear away from the branches that held them so tenaciously, and the trees swayed dangerously hither and thither. The wind swept in with a howl and people huddled in their quilts were beginning to wonder if the tents that sheltered them were indeed pitched solidly. Or how because of the way the wind blew so wildly, could it possibly be carrying some missive? "
5 " You have probably never seen the pillage of a town, people around you hacked to pieces, or else you would not speak with such indifference towards your country. "
6 " She wraps him with her flirtatious song - full of hints – then follows it with an ode in which with slow posturing she upbraids him, curses him, implores him, then finally adjures him with desperate wringing of her hands. "
7 " I saw you again on my wedding day, my love, when you performed. They say the floor rocked that night. I don’t believe any of it for it was on the floor that my eyes were focused throughout the evening and I did not see it tremble even once. "
8 " He wrote about the five nobles who had returned to fight a thousand enemy soldiers. He, himself, had cut down one of them, “a young prince, even on the battlefield, his face showed the first blush of love … But there is no room for the lament. This is a warring land - the entire country, forever at war, its wealth strewn around for whoever is strong enough to grab it. Isn’t that why I too am here? "
9 " A life of madness I have been living for fifteen years. I have thrown away everything I had, my devoted wife, two lovely children, my family, my wealth on a hopeless passion. My love that once glowed like a warm flame is gone. A fire burns inside me now. My love, instead of being upheld has been cast aside like dirt. I can weep all I want out of rage and self-loathing but the world will only laugh at the sight of me. "
10 " He turned his thoughts instead to his wife. He imagined how upon his return he would pull her into the bed and make love to her, the gem-encrusted, meena-painted necklace adorning her bared bosom, strands of her long silky hair flowing all around his head like streaming waterfall, eyes half-shut in ecstasy. "
11 " One day, when my face and my name are forgotten – for the wheel of life involves everyone thrown into this world in its revolving circle and mixes them finally with the dust – then I would perhaps become transparent as a breeze. And if one looks for the heroes of our times and of the past, all then just heaps of insignificant dust, they would be found blowing by the force of my currents, in my stories. "
12 " He had often wondered if the sea that incessantly broke its many heads against the boulders without doing them any injury was in effect trying to convey something to man. Why it was an insinuation of the same charge – the message that the succession of sunshine and shade of the jungle carried and in a matter of a few moments it had become all too clear to him: Truth, deceit! Truth, deceit! the chant to which this world of ours whirls. "
13 " It is an old custom. Men of good-intentions and goodwill who have the means stud the land around forlorn villages with fine groves and wells for the general comfort of travelers, and also so people from posterity while resting in the shade and refreshing themselves would think of them and would think kindly. "
14 " Gods must have had their reasons when they unleashed locusts on this earth; locusts, that in their happy numbers, infest a place and leave behind a trail of death and misery. "
15 " This ring has special ways of its own. If this ring could talk, it would have more stories to tell you than even me. "
16 " The parsee’s eyes, like a mad man’s, were fixed in air, nowhere in particular, and his thoughts soared into another time. "
17 " He followed him like a she-snake follows her mate’s killer, the blanket pulled in a hood over his head and his head filled with a thousand questions. "
18 " People loathe the idea of destruction, particularly when it is the destruction of property or of life one is talking about (Destruction of the good name of a person, however, is a completely different matter) "
19 " He had the skills, he could have fought them. But he did not. He was too scared that he would fail - as if the winners of the world fight their battles certain of their victories! "
20 " His body was shriveled like a leaf that has left its tree and that has been curled by time about its natural lines. "
