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Sakoon Singh Books

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“Mother today had displayed that rustic courage of the country; the free unshackled unrestrained energy that so characterised the earthy Sikh people. A mooring was coming undone in his heart. He was secretly proud of his mother. He might have felt embarrassed at her lack of restraint but he desperately wanted to get some of that raw courage. He could only dream of it. He had a spontaneous vision of an expansive green field stretching acre after acre under a blazing sun. That is where his people got it from.”

CouragePunjabSikhJind KaurMaharaja Ranjit SinghDuleep Singh
Book:Fourteen Springs of Separation
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“But then, this treachery is at the heart of love. That two people’s needs are never the same. That while it involves fulfillment through another, you understand more about sovereignty. That your desire and the other’s independence of will would always be in an elusive chase. That some might be transiting through love because they are conditioned to do things at appropriate stages, like other life activities, others might be totally transformed by it. That two in love might be looking in one direction but never at the same thing. This struggle to get the lover to see what you see is futile and yet a deep desire. Much later she was to grow up and she learn more. And even though Nanaki felt bereft of love and heart broken and utterly abandoned, even some seemingly seeped in love could be having a heart break. The desire to be understood is primeval too. It might be forgotten for a while in the euphoria of new love. But it resurfaces like a lost child come home. You can’t shut the door. You got to take it in. The tussle then begins.”

LoveDesireHeartbreakStruggles In Relationships
Book:In The Land of The Lovers
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“And even though body has entwined with body, vows have been whispered into the lover’s ears in the throes of unimaginable passion, there’s a pang still. One has not felt understood by the lover. And that is a different quality of loneliness. A constant dull hammering. Like static hum. Dissonance. Ultimately it translates into a plain inability to see the other’s view. We shout betrayal. We shift blame. We feel inadequate. When it is plain inability. So their intimacy has a narrow gap running across, like a rift between two continents and it’s only when you examine it from above, do you really see it. You realize that the gap could be the breadth of a hairline but it is deep. It’s darkness stretches all the way down into a free falling abyss.”

LovePassionLonelinessBetrayalIntimacyStruggles In Relationships
Author:Sakoon Singh
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“Freedom of the heart and the mind is a splendid thing. It’s no guarantee that a high birth will ensure it, or, for that matter, even a high education. It’s not that ill-treatment will always become a catalyst to rebellion. Scores of ill-treated women retreat more and more into their shell of limitations. It’s not certain that a master or guru will awaken you from that slumber; there is no guarantee about these things. No. You cannot be sure. And then, what all this will not achieve, one quiet moment of insight will.”

FreedomEducationEnlightenmentInsightRebellionWomen S Rights
Book:Fourteen Springs of Separation
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“Blood stains are not easy to remove. Yes, and they will enter the rooms and see my bedding. Perhaps a young girl will fit into my daughter’s clothes. Or it’ll all be a waste because they too lost a young daughter in the vadda raula. These clothes will haunt them. They will want to go back. How crazy! I don’t want to be here and they don’t want to be there. They can’t be here and I can’t be there. How absurd! It is like someone just did it in jest. What value does my life have? Zilch. Nobody thought of this? They live with my nightmares, I live with theirs. And then learn to ignore these sounds I hear from the crevices of the new house. Each night I plug my ears and shut my eyes. A new story over my story. The slate has been wiped clean. With blood.”

ViolenceBloodMigrantsDislocationPunjabPartition Of Subcontinent 1947
Book:In The Land of The Lovers
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“They have done me so much wrong. I have found no rest since the day I left Lahore. See these eyes, they are of little use now. See these hands of mine, they tremble. My skin looks now like a shrivelled date. Though my Waheguru knows, that despite these physical infirmities, a rare strength wells up within me when I think of Duleep and Lahore.”

SeparationLahoreJind KaurMaharaja Ranjit SinghDuleep Singh
Book:Fourteen Springs of Separation
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“Departures could be delightful. Pregnant with possibility. Perhaps this urge had something to do with having witnessed a very eccentric Professor father who would be so preoccupied with his internal life, these daily chores and routines just existed in the margins. One did not have to feed them, they had to feed one’s life- a life that added up to being more than a succession of everyday banal routines.”

CreativityPossibilityEccentricInternal LifeBanality Of Routines
Book:In The Land of The Lovers
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“And like they say, sometimes you have no teacher but your experiences. My experience taught me every day. I blundered my way through but learnt the ropes. I was a woman thrown into a role bigger than me, but I held on to the girl of my childhood—sweet Jindan. Whenever things became too much, whenever I did not have the answer, I sought it in my mind, frolicking in the expanse of my childhood village.”

SorrowExperienceJind Kaur
Book:Fourteen Springs of Separation
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“Your mind, son, that is the power you have when your body is in chains. Don’t let them get to your mind. They can chain up your limbs, they can hold you hostage in alien lands, but they can’t stop the flow of your thoughts, your own mind. Hold on to that, son. If you ask me what we ought to salvage, I would say salvage the mind. We can always fill up the Toshakhana, it is the mind that needs to be free of chains.”

Jind KaurMaharaja Ranjit SinghDuleep SinghLohoreToshakhana
Book:Fourteen Springs of Separation
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“Yes good one- hold on tight- to ideas. At times, since we are talking so much about birds and all things avian, these flighty things do have a tendency to spread their gossamer wings and take flight. So you haven’t even begun to see it and it disappears from your view. At times you don’t even know how many of these frisky things you thought of and they instantly frolicked their way into some wonderland. There they remain latent. Sometimes for mere moments, sometimes days, sometimes months and years. And then in a flash. They come back without warning, at times stealthily, in our most unguarded moments- in bed, polishing shoes, rolling out a roti, driving or pooping and you are not prepared. They settle tentatively on your sleepy eyes for a second and before you know it, fly past you in a flash again, good for you if you hold them then and there, for if you think you will sit yourself down one day with the wrong end of the pen in your mouth, or the laptop loaded with the works, or the dream paints on the palette, to capture what you saw in your mind’s stratosphere- you just blink and find it’s just a blankness you see, no matter how hard you try, a blankness that stares with a baffling obduracy. At times you even forget that you forgot. The thought had yet not entered your conscious mind- it was just hovering between the sleeping world and the awake, and just falls off the edge. Never makes it. Yes they are flighty things.” She rounded it with a peal of laughter, amused with the little story she had concocted.”

IdeasInspirationPower Of IdeasPunjab
Book:In The Land of The Lovers
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“They had to start back soon. They were already way behind schedule. Sitting silently on the rear of his bike, she threw back her head, letting the wind run through her hair. It was twilight and she could see the mountains turn into dark indistinct shapes, which together with the spark of lights from a distance, looked strangely mystical. She moved closer to Himmat at this point and instinctively put her arm around his waist. For an instant he released his hand from the bike to touch her arm and put it more firmly in place. She bent forward, resting her whole body on the curve of his back. She could feel his rising and falling breath. The dark of the twilight closed on to their gliding silhouettes.”

TwilightMotorcycle RomanceMotorcycle Ride
Book:In The Land of The Lovers
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