Quotessence
Home / Authors / Vikram Seth Biography
Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth Biography

Novelist

Related Quotes

“And after they had made love, she became more than everything for him. Like that other source of domestic strife, Saeeda Bai too made hungry where most she satisfied. Part of it was simply the delicious skill with which she made love. But even more than that it was her nakhra, the art of pretended hurt or disaffection that she had learned from her mother and other courtesans in the early days in Tarbuz ka Bazaar. Saeeda Bai practised this with such curious restraint that it became infinitely more believable. One tear, one remark that implied—perhaps, only perhaps implied— that something he had said or done had caused her injury—and Maan's heart would go out to her. No matter what the cost to himself, he would protect her from the cruel, censorious world. For minutes at a time he would lean over her shoulder and kiss her neck, glancing every few moments at her face in the hope of seeing her mood lift. And when it did, and he saw that same bright, sad smile that had so captivated him when she sang at Holi at Prem Nivas, he would be seized by a frenzy of sexual desire. Saeeda Bsi seemed to know this, and graced him with a smile only when she herself was in the mood to satisfy him.”

LovePassionSexLustInjurySatisfyA Suitable BoyVikram SethNakhraSaeeda Bai
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is no secret that many people here think that you are a communist.' Rasheed reflected that this probably meant only that he loathed the poverty and injustice endemic to the village, and that he made no particular secret of it.”

PovertyCommunismAltruismSocial Injustice
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“I walk across the park to her flat. It is over-heated and there is a great deal of pink. This used not to unnerve me. Now when I step into the bathroom I recoil. Pink bath, pink basin, pink toilet, pink bidet, pink tiles, pink wallpaper, pink rug. Brushes, soap, tooth brush, silk flowers, toilet paper: all pink. Even the little foot-operated waste-bin is pale pink. I know this little waste-bin well. Every time I sleep here I wonder what I am doing with my time and hers. She is sixteen years younger than I am. She is not the woman with whom I want to share my life. But, having begun, what we have continues. She wants it to, and I go along with it, through lust and loneliness, I suppose; and laziness, and lack of focus.”

LonelinessLustPink
Book:An Equal Music
Create image

“She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret. And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool.”

DeathFamilyRegretLegacy
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“I vecchi si aggrappano al potere e alle loro convinzioni, che ammettono tutti i loro vizi peggiori ma escludono il minimo errore e soffocano la minima innovazione dei giovani. Poi, grazie a Dio, muoiono e non possono fare più danni. Ma ormai noi, i giovani, siamo diventati vecchi, e ci sforziamo di quel po' di male che loro hanno lasciato incompiuto.”

MorteMaleDioPotereVecchiaiaErroriGioventùConvinzioneVizioVizi
Book:A Suitable Boy, Vol. 1
Create image

“Si guardarono, Maan un po' sbilanciato dalla sua franchezza. Gli sembrava che lei tentasse addirittura di trattenersi dallo scoppiare a ridere. "Forse dovrei raffreddarla con un ghazal malinconico" continuò Saeeda Bai. "Sì, perché non prova?" ribatté Maan, rammentando quello che lei aveva detto una volta sui ghazal. "Vediamo che effetto avrà su di me." "Mi lasci chiamare i musicisti" disse Saeeda Bai. "No" rispose Maan, posando la mano sulla sua. "Soltanto lei e l'armonium, basterà." "Neanche il suonatore di tabla?" "Segnerò il tempo col mio cuore" rispose Maan.”

AmoreRomanticismo
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“In quale corpo era incarnato ora suo marito? Se era rinato in forma umana, lo avrebbe riconosciuto qualora le fosse passato accanto per strada? Che cosa significava l'asserire, a proposito del sacramento del matrimonio, che sarebbero rimasti legati per sette vite? Per quanto ne sapeva lei, quell'ultimo matrimonio sarebbe potuto essere il settimo per lei. L'emozione la spingeva a un'interpretazione letterale; anelava a una rassicurazione tangibile. Il sanscrito tranquillizzate del volumetto verde rilegato in tela le passava tra le labbra, ma pur dandole la pace - quando recitava la Gita le salivano di rado le lacrime agli occhi - non rispondeva a nessuna delle sue domande. E mentre la saggezza antica si rivelava così spesso priva di consolazione, la fotografia, quella crudele arte moderna, contribuiva a impedire che anche l'immagine del viso di suo marito fosse sbiadita dal tempo.”

IndiaAmoreArteMatrimonioFotografiaEmozioniReligioneInduismoReincarnazione
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“The Fever Bird The fever bird sand out last night. I could not sleep, try as I might. My brain was split, my spirit raw. I looked into the garden, saw The shadow of the amaltas Shake slightly on the moonlit grass Unseen, the bird cried out its grief, Its lunacy, without relief: Three notes repeated closer, higher, Soaring, then sinking down like fire Only to breathe the night and soar, As crazed, as desperate, as before. I shivered in the midnight heat And smelt the sweat that soaked my sheet. And now tonight I hear again The call that skewers though my brain, The call, the brain-sick triple note-- A cone of pain stuck inits throat. I am so tired I could weep. Mad bird, for God's sake let me sleep Why do you cry like one possessed? When will you rest? When will you rest? Why wait each night till all but I Lie sleeping in the house, then cry? Why do you scream into my ear What no one else but I can hear?”

PoetryA Suitable Boy
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image

“You grieve for those beyond grief, and you speak words of insight; but learned men do not grieve for the dead or the living. Never have I not existed nor you, nor these kings; and never in the future shall we cease to exist. Just as the embodied self enters childhood, youth, and old age, so does it enter another body; this does not confound a steadfast man. Contacts with matter make us feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain. Arjuna, you must learn to endure fleeting things-they come and go! When these cannot torment a man, when suffering and joy are equal for him and he has courage, he is fit for immortality. Nothing of nonbeing comes to be, nor does being cease to exist; the boundary between these two is seen by men who see reality. Indestructible is this presence that pervades all this; no one can destroy this unchanging reality. ...”

GriefIndiaOld AgeGrief And LossReincarnationImmoralityGrieveA Suitable BoyVikram Seth
Author:Vikram Seth
Create image

“Well, what do you think? Avanti?" "Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments, and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement. How good it is to pay this quintet, to play it, not to work at it - to play for our own joy, with no need to convey anything to anyone outside our ring of recreation, with no expectation of a future stage, of the too-immediate sop of applause. The quintet exists without us yet cannot exist without us. It sings to us, we sing into it, and somehow, through these little black and white insects clustering along five thin lines, the man who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed speaks into us across land and water and ten generations, and fills us here with sadness, here with amazed delight.”

MusicBeethovenQuintet
Book:An Equal Music
Create image

“All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca.”

PeopleWorldMovingHousePrayerDarknessSunFivePrayingElementsShadowIndiaWestWaveEastEach DayIronGlobesComponentsPraying To GodMagnetRippleMeccaFilingHouse Of God
Book:A Suitable Boy
Create image