Train To Pakistan Quotes
"The summer of 1947 was not like other Indian summers. Even the weather had a different feel in India that year."
"Both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped."
"The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier."
"Mano Majra is a tiny place. It has only three brick buildings."
"In India villages cannot afford to be too close to the banks of rivers. Rivers change their moods with the seasons and alter their courses without warning."
"The stationmaster himself sells tickets through the pigeonhole in his office, collects them at the exit beside the door, and sends and receives messages over the telegraph ticker on the table."
"All this has made Mano Majra very conscious of trains."
"It had always been so, until the summer of 1947."
"One heavy night in August of that year, five men emerged from a keekar grove not far from Mano Majra, and moved silently towards the river."
"Juggut Singh had been gone from his home about an hour. He had only left when the sound of the night goods train told him that it would now be safe to go."
"‘Freedom must be a good thing. But what will we get out of it? Educated people like you, Babu Sahib, will get the jobs the English had. Will we get more lands or more buffaloes?’"
"‘No, Bhaiji, criminals are not born. They are made by hunger, want and injustice.’"
"‘Sometimes, sir, one cannot restrain oneself. What do the Gandhi-caps in Delhi know about the Punjab?’"
"‘I have lived in their country many years. They are nice as human beings. Politically they are the world’s biggest four-twenties.’"
"Early next morning, Iqbal was arrested."
"I would rather trust you than the police in this free country of ours."
"You are in the same handcuffs and fetters which the English put on you."
"If caste was abolished by legislation, it came up in other forms of class distinction."
"No one could prove how he had raised the money, but at the end of the year the police had taken him."
"She was asleep on the big cane armchair, wrapped in her black sequined sari."
"The earth cracks up and deep fissures open their gaping mouths asking for water; but there is no water."
"It is a season. There is a summer monsoon as well as a winter monsoon."
"One should bow before the storm till it passes."
"No people used incestuous abuse quite as casually as did the Indians."
"There is no difference between women. As a matter of fact, white women are not very exciting."
"When you get married, you will find your wife a match for you."
"The sahibs have left. You should learn your own language."
"Rain is nothing. Even if there was an earthquake, duty first!"
"Not forever does the bulbul sing in balmy shades of bowers, not forever lasts the spring nor ever blossom flowers."
"Only befriend the Turk when all other communities are dead."
"For each Hindu or Sikh they kill, kill two Mussulmans."
"The Sikhs will rule, their enemies will be scattered, only they that seek refuge will be saved!"
"If I do not spit in Malli's mouth, my name is not Juggut Singh."
"He who made the night and day, The days of the week and seasons. He who made the breezes blow, the waters run, The fires and the lower regions."
"Made the earth—the temple of law. He who made creatures of diverse kinds With a multitude of names, Made this the law— By thought and deed be judged forsooth, For God is True and dispenseth Truth."
"There are sorted deeds that were done and bore fruit, From those that to action could never ripen."
"Air, water and earth, Of these are we made, Air like the Guru’s word gives the breath of life To the babe born of the great mother Earth Sired by the waters."
"In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty."
"If you look at things as they are, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one’s conduct."
"Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater."
"It is both cowardly and foolhardy to kowtow to social standards when one believes neither in the society nor in its standards."
"Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good."
"It is no use trying to build a second storey on a house whose walls are rotten. It is best to demolish it."