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Bombay Quotes

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Bombay Quotes

“And just wait until you see how soft and green the countryside is in summer! How gentle and floral, filled with honeysuckles and primroses, narrow laneways and hedgerows... These foreign words, spoken with a romantic longing that Ada could not understand and did not trust, she had turned over with the dispassionate interest of an archaeologist building a picture of a distant civilization. She had been born in Bombay, and India was as much a part of her as the nose on her face and the freckles that covered it. She didn't recognize words like "soft" and "gentle" and "narrow": her world was vast and sudden and blazing. It was a place of unspeakable beauty- of brilliant flowers on the terrace and sweet swooning fragrance in the dead of night- but also of mercurial cruelty. It was her home.”

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Book:The Clockmaker's Daughter
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“I cannot come with you, pilla. I would wilt like a plucked flower. I belong here." "Well, I belong here, too." They had reached the bottom of the hill and the line of palms that grew along the coast. The dhows bobbed mildly on the flat sea, their sails down, as white-robed Parsees gathered along the shores to begin their sunset prayers. Ada stopped walking and faced the golden ocean, the dying sun still warm on her face. She was infused with a feeling for which she did not have a name, but which was exquisitely wonderful and painful at the same time. She repeated, more softly now, "I belong here, too, Shashi.”

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Book:The Clockmaker's Daughter
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“At her final dinner in Imperial Heights, she notices afresh all that a week has made familiar: the silk runner, the brass casseroles, and the many little bowls on her plate that Sita, already turning invisible, keeps refilling. The meal is elaborate. There is saag paneer because it is her favourite Indian dish; corn bake, should the curry get too spicy; what she now knows is dal, not soup; yogurt, rotis, pilaf rice and pickle. Her first night here, she asked what order to eat things in, and everyone laughed like it was the most charming thing to say. Tonight, she folds her roti into a roll, one bite for each spoonful of curry, and as the subject of her new rental in Santacruz leads to a discussion on the city's suburbs, she feels reassured that Nana is right, people are people; no matter where you go and how confusing or daunting or hilarious they seem, there is always room to be kindred.”

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Book:Quarterlife
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“As they left the pier and walked into the park, Chahda looked around appreciatively. "Nice place, this. Capital of New Caledonia. Big island, has 8,548 square mile, also has 53,245 peoples. Eleven thousand in Noumea. That is what says the Worrold Alm-in-ack." Rick and Scotty laughed. It was like old times to hear Chahda quoting from The World Almanac. A Bombay beggar boy, he had educated himself with only the Almanac for his textbook, and he had laboriously memorized everything in it.”

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Book:The Phantom Shark
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“A teenage boy with a Mohawk sat across from me, sneering. I’d seen that look before. Why was it a problem to knit in public? “My grandma knits.” I ignored him. “So what are you making, Grandma?” Mohawk’s voice was ugly. I arched my eyebrow. “A cashmere cock ring. Your grandma ever knit one of those?” The kid’s eyes grew wide, and he suddenly became very interested in a four-year-old issue of Teen Vogue.”

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Book:'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy
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“While in Bombay, I began, on one hand, my study of Indian law and, on the other, my experiments in dietetics in which Virchand Gandhi, a friend, joined me. My brother, for his part was trying his best to get me briefs. The study of India law was a tedious business. The Civil Procedure Code I could in no way get on with. Not so however, with the Evidence Act. Virchand Gandhi was reading for the Solicitor's Examination and would tell me all sorts of stories about Barristers and Vakils.”

GandhiBombayMahatma GandhiVirchand GandhiBarristerCivil Procedure Code IEvidence ActIndian Law
Book:Gandhi: An Autobiography
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“This city was our common ground, I want to tell Kaiz. Not simply its soil, nor its salt or tides, not lines on any map, nor buildings and streets. Something else entirely. An image, a dream, an idea that beguiled both of us: a magical place with chaos in its code, where our stories collided briefly. That romance with the city he carries with him wherever he goes. What it means to me, though, goes beyond what we had in common, it can’t be packed up and transported tidily. Mumbai for me is two people who moved from small coastal towns to this metropolis by the sea and made it their home. My home. And that is how the city is different for the two of us: for him both Mumbai and home were abstractions. Abstractions are at once more fragile and more hardy than reality.”

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Book:Milk Teeth
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“Bombay, you will be told, is the only city India has, in the sense that the word city is understood in the West. Other Indian metropolises like Calcutta, Madras and Delhi are like oversized villages. It is true that Bombay has many more high-rise buildings than any other Indian city: when you approach it by the sea it looks like a miniature New York. It has other things to justify its city status: it is congested, it has traffic jams at all hours of the day, it is highly polluted and many parts of it stink.”

CitiesIndiaIndian AuthorsCity LifeBombayMetropolisMumbaiKhushwant Singh
Book:Truth, Love & A Little Malice
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“The city continued on its way. Boys tried to sell me drumsticks, girls played hopscotch, the Bihari badly worker carried his gathri of ironed clothes to the homes from which they had come, and the buses honked at suicidal cyclists. At one level this was vaguely confusing. Surely, something should acknowledge how much things had changed? At another level, it was oddly comforting.”

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Book:Em and the Big Hoom
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“She removed the shining black disk from its sleeve, holding it by the edges. After she placed it on the turntable and set the arm into motion, she adjusted the volume on the amplifier, flooding the room with sound. She closed her eyes and began to sway to the music. She could almost feel Clive’s arms guiding her, as he had done so many times over the course of their lives together. (from Independence Day)”

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Book:Bombay Bhel
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“Agosto é bello starsene a casa con la cittá vuota e nessun rompiballe in giro, magari arrivi che senti la tua solitudine farsi pesante ma é un gioco diverso ed essere soli fa molto piú male in mezzo alla gente, allora sí che é davvero doloroso e pungono le ossa e il respiro é davvero brutto , come vivere un trip scannato e troppo lungo. Ma Agosto é bello starsene soli in cittá, prendere l´auto e girare fino al mattino spingendosi pieni di alcool verso la montagna che tutto é uno scenario disteso e silenzioso e passi col rombo dell´auto come al cinema, uscendo dal quadro un attimo dopo esservi entrato e non si rovina nulla. La via Emilia é la dorsale di questo mio agosto inquieto e torpido, selvatico e morbido. Stasera mi sono messo in macchina lasciando il gigi a sonnechiare, menomale che la faccenda di Bombay é morta lí. Ora non voglio muovermi, soltanto scorrazzare la notte in questa prateria. E la scomessa e´venuta da sé. I bar tra Reggio e Parma, ventuno? No, trentatré.”

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Author:Pier Vittorio Tondelli
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“Afterwards, Ada turned slow cartwheels on the terrace, watching the world change kaleidoscopically from purple to orange as the queen's crepe myrtles took turns with the hibiscus. The gardener was sweeping the lawn and his helper was cleaning down the curved cane chairs on the wide verandah. Ordinarily, cartwheeling was one of Ada's favorite things to do, but this afternoon her heart wasn't in it. Rather than enjoying the way the world spun around her, she felt dizzy, even queasy. After a time, she sat instead on the edge of the verandah near the spider lilies.”

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Book:The Clockmaker's Daughter
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“Ada tore open the package to find a small black leather book inside. Between its covers were no words, but instead page after page of pressed flowers: orange hibiscus, mauve Queen's crepe myrtle, purple passionflower, white spider lilies, red powder puffs. All of them, Ada knew, had come from her very own garden, and in an instant she was back in Bombay. She could feel the sultry air on her face, smell the heady fragrance of summer, hear the songs of prayer as the sun set over the ocean.”

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Book:The Clockmaker's Daughter
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“She was his first music student. He tried teaching her to play the guitar, but she was so terrible at it that he stopped within a few weeks. By then, her violent strums had damaged all the strings on Joe’s guitar. To make things worse, she had also clawed into his fretboard with her long, sharp nails, leaving several gashes. ‘Your sister is the worst enemy of my music,’ a miffed Joe had told his friend.”

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Book:Bombay Balchão
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“I met my wife [Sukhinder Kaur Gill] in Bombay at an official function. And then we courted for three years. That's a great old term, 'courting’. And we had to do it quietly, of course, because you would know the difficulties one might have with Indian parents. She was advised by her father that people in the West don't take marriage seriously.”

PeopleKnowsYearsMightThreeCoursesFatherParentTermWifeMetsFunctionDifficultyWestMy WifeIndianOfficialsThree YearsBombay
Author:Glenn Turner
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“You obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship--indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.”

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Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“Bombay is far ahead of Bengal in the matter of female education. I have visited some of the best schools in Bengal and Bombay, and I can say from my own experience that there are a larger number of girls receiving public education in Bombay than in Bengal; but while Bengal has not come up to Bombay as far as regarded extent of education, Bengal is not behind Bombay in the matter of solidarity and depth.”

I CanMatterSchoolGirlMy OwnNumbersBehindsFemaleDepthCome UpReceivingSolidarityPublic EducationBombayBest SchoolFemale Education
Author:Keshub Chandra Sen
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“For each glass, liberally large, the basic ingredients begin with ice cubes in a shaker and three or four drops of Angostura bitters on the ice cubes. Add several twisted lemon peels to the shaker, then a bottle-top of dry vermouth, a bottle-top of Scotch, and multiply the resultant liquid content by five with gin, preferably Bombay Sapphire. Add more gin if you think it is too bland... I have been told, but have no personal proof that it is true, that three of these taken in the course of an evening make it possible to fly from New York to Paris without an airplane.”

IfsThinkingHas BeensThreeCoursesTakenFiveFourNew YorkAddGlassesProofIceEveningParisDryCulinaryIngredientsBottlesAirplaneTwistedLiquidLemonsGinScotchBlandCubesBombayShakersSapphires
Author:Isaac Stern
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“At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldHeartHomeEyeEarthHalfBreakHeardSkyGrewBandGrew UpHundredBlueGlancesExquisiteRelentlessBreak Your HeartBombay
Book:Contact
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“The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away.”

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Author:Frosty Wooldridge
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“Let me explain something to you. Look around here. How many people do you count? Sixty, eighty, eighty people? Greeks, Germans, Italians, French, Americans. Tourists from everywhere. Eating, drinking, talking, laughing. And from Bombay - Indians and Iranians and Afghans and Arabs and Africans. But how many of these people have real power, real destiny, real dynamic for their place, and their time, and the lives of thousand of people? I will tell you - four. Four people in this room with power, and the rest are like the rest of the people everywhere: powerless, sleepers in the dream.”

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Author:Gregory David Roberts
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