Delhi Quotes

“Once through this ruined city did I pass
I espied a lonely bird on a bough and asked
‘What knowest thou of this wilderness?’
It replied: 'I can sum it up in two words:
‘Alas, Alas!”
― Khushwant Singh, Delhi

“Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,’ she said. ‘Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“Just because drivers and cooks in Delhi are reading Murder Weekly, it doesn't mean that they are all about to slit their masters' necks. Of course they’d like to. Of course, a billion servants are secretly fantasizing about strangling their bosses — and that’s why the government of India publishes this magazine and sells it on the streets for just four and a half rupees so that even the poor can buy it. you see, the murdered in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would want to be like him — and in the end he always gets caught by some honest, hardworking police officer (ha!), or goes mad and hangs himself by a bedsheet after writing a sentimental letter to his mother or primary school teacher, or is chased, beaten, buggered, and garroted by the brother of the woman he has done in. So if your driver is busy flicking through the pages of Murder Weekly, relax. No danger to you. Quite the contrary.

It’s when your driver starts to read about Gandhi and the Buddha that it’s time to wet your pants.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“When a man's instincts are evil, repentance has a short lease and brief is his gratitude towards those who have done him good.”
― Khuswant Singh

“The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.”
― Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice

“One aspiration and thousand aspirants fighting to make their place.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“The food in the hostel mess is worst of a kind. The grief in my words reach easily to those who have" been there and done that "Chapatti in the meal is either so uncooked or overly cooked and you can only expect dal in the ocean of water when you are ready to swim.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Myra wasn't simple or complicated. She was different. She was not perfect, not even close but her flaws were intresting. She always had an opinion, something to say about everything.Most interesting thing about her is that she never said something to please, yet she was nice to be around.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“I am a palette of emotions; I remember how I have cov-eted to be free from the school rules. I look around to see people casually dressed up and walking with an aim maybe to make a better career or just add fame of DU degree like me. The campus is buzzing with freshman and activity. I just hope, these corridors, hallways, and passages don’t see me trip-ping and falling any day. I feel more comfortable standing in between the crowd of people moving. Like nobody is paying any heed. You can be yourself without feeling awkward about anything.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“As much as they were right for each other, time wasn't right for them.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“We entered the Taj Mahal, the most romantic place on the planet, and possibly the most beautiful building on earth. We ate curry with our driver in a Delhi street café late at night and had the best chicken tikka I’ve ever tasted in an Agra restaurant. After the madness of Delhi, we were astonished that Agra could be even more mental. And we loved it. We marvelled at the architecture of the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan spent the last three years of his life, imprisoned and staring across at the Taj Mahal, the tomb of his favourite wife. We spent two days in a village constructed specifically for tiger safaris, although I didn’t see a tiger, my wife and son were more fortunate. We noticed in Mussoorie, 230 miles from the Tibetan border, evidence of Tibetan features in the faces of the Indians, and we paid just 770 rupees for the three of us to eat heartily in a Tibetan restaurant. Walking along the road accompanied by a cow became as common place as seeing a whole family of four without crash helmets on a motorcycle, a car going around a roundabout the wrong way, and cars approaching towards us on the wrong side of a duel carriageway. India has no traffic rules it seems.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“It feels like home, far from home, yet homely. I have always been a fan of Delhi's practical life not that i have lived in an aspiration or yearning to make a living here, but delhi has always been on my soapbox.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“I'm determined that I won't give up on my dreams for anything. I have evolved in these years. Learned and outgrown a lot many things including the unrealistic expectations of my family,fake relationships,society's criticism,surpassed people who are intimidated by my outspoken nature, Faux friends and especially the people who disappear in dark whenever they think its easier for them to do so. I have grown over stupid and useless conversations. The insecurity and the feeling of self doubt. I have never been less burdened.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Cut off's are like real sadist as they watch some folks happy and disappoint the majority. People dream of a life at Delhi University. Delhiites know there is something special about the brand name and life at the campus. Rest as they say is history and it speaks volumes.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Living independent might come as appalling as the word to anyone but me. The one who thinks it's a cool idea and worth it, has sure forgotten that independence comes with a price. If one doesn't still agree, you gotta try staying at a hostel.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Hostel is one phase in a man's life that teaches him what Indian mothers fail to teach their children despite the use of potential weapons like rolling pin,broom stick, wiper so on and henceforth. Who knows if you are luckier, you might just experience your bachelorhood as a paying guest.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“College life is different, entirely different like you don't have to get ready and wear that red and crisp blue school uniform and look alike every day. Free to define ourselves with statement attire. Good thing.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“I am sick and tired of coming good on expectations.”
― Parul Wadhwa

“I have a distinct air of myself standing amidst such a crowd of people. My eyes set above, looking at the tall building if it bespeaks a promising note. I don’t know how fair is life, All I know is I have a plan to alter the face of it, the way I choose. A purpose, a driving motive, and an obsession.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Just because some dreams never see light that doesn’t make us nonbelievers, they are wings to our sky and fiction makes us dream. I know the truth is fatal, especially for the stubborn’s but trust me the illusion is worse.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Abstract conversations are my favourite, for they unviel true convictions.”
― Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

“Every time the train stopped at a station, we would all hold our breath, making sure not a single sound drifted out of the closed windows. We were hungry and our throats parched. From inside the train we heard voices travelling up and down the platform, saying, “Hindu paani,” and, from the other side, “Muslim paani.” Apart from land and population, even the water had now been divided”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“Our senses were assaulted with colours, smells and noise. We saw a million saris, and never once did I see the same pattern repeated twice. We saw poverty that both humbled and disturbed us. We bartered with street traders for Indian prices, not tourist prices. We stopped by the side of the road and watched an old man crushing sugar canes so that we could drink the juice. It was the most delectable and flavourful drink we have ever tasted. We walked barefoot around the Swaminarayan Akshardham, the largest Hindu house of worship in the world, and were absolutely awed. The whole temple echoes with spirituality and we could have spent an entire day there. I saw a village of dirty black bricks, no rendering, just filth and grime, and right in the middle an exquisite and elegant white temple, freshly painted and unblemished. We drove from Jaipur to Delhi. The previous day the road had been closed due to the Jat caste protests. Thirty people died, ten women reported being raped and buildings and cars were set on fire”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Every sword that pricked us ignited our loyalty for one another”
― Amina Mughal, A Piece of My Heart

“Two roads diverged in Delhi and Jish Guha took the one that led straight to a seedy bar in Paharganj.”
― Nikita Deshpande, It Must've Been Something He Wrote

“Old Delhi does not change. It only decays. My students tell me it is a great cemetery, every house a tomb. Nothing but sleeping graves. NowNewDelhi, they say is different. That is where things happen. The way they describe it, it sounds like a nest of fleas. So much happens there, it must be a jumping place. I never go. Baba never goes. And here, here nothing happens at all.”
― Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day

“More red lights on top of the cars than on roads. Glamorous lifestyle coexisting with some underprivileged lives. Big showrooms on the left, begging kids on the right. Azaan from the mosque blending smoothly with the pleasant sound of temple bells. The modern travel miracle Delhi Metro passes by the ancient temples and monuments. Crowded streets coexist with lonely hearts. This city is like the most beautiful girl in a college. That is what I know about Delhi, the capital city of the nation.”
― Misbah Khan, Blanks & Blues

“It hurts to see what civilization has done to reduce (within 100km) a princess to the status of a rag picker and make smiling nymph of nature a toothless old crone.”
― Bill Aitken, Seven Sacred Rivers

“But do you know, you can love a city like a woman? My old father had lived in Delhi all his life. He died of a broken heart.”
― Girish Karnad, Tughlaq: A Play in Thirteen Scenes

“If Bombay is India's New York-glamorous, glitzy, vulgar-chic, a merchant city, a movie city, a slum city, incredibly rich, hideously poor- then Delhi is like Washington. Politics is the only game in town. Nobody talks about anything else for very long.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002