Amina Mughal Quotes

The songbirds chirped her poetry through the cracks of his broken dreams ~ Amina Mughal

During Aurangzeb's rule, which lasted for forty-nine years from 1658 onwards, there were many phases during which Pandits were persecuted. One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru's martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved. ~ Rahul Pandita

And even if Amina didn't yet know what it was to love like that, to burn until your spine has no choice but to try to wind itself around an empty shirt, she understood for sure that the people who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all were a bunch of dicks. ~ Mira Jacob

The entire Habsburg landscape was given a deep, even coating of musical interpretation, whether Smetana and Dvorak in Bohemia or Haydn and Schubert in Austria or Bartok and Kodaly in Hungary. As soon as you head south from Hungary or the Carpathians this music stops. And with food, the greedy, complex and extravagant Habsburg world of layered cakes, a mad use of chocolate, subtle soups and fine wines goes off a cliff. This is obviously an enormous subject, ludicrously compressed here, but the very idea of such complex foods trickled down in the west from royal courts, famously with the development of the idea of the 'French restaurant' in the aftermath of the Revolution. Indeed, we all eagerly guzzle a range of court foods - with many Indian and Chinese restaurants in the west also serving essentially court Mughal or Qing banquet foods, albeit in mutilated forms. ~ Simon Winder

Sometimes you can't fix everything," said Amina. "Life isn't always like books."
"No, it's not. ~ Helen Simonson

But later that night, as I brush my teeth in the bathroom, I overhear Baba and Thaya Jaan talking in the guest room next door. "

All this music all the time. You shouldn't let Amina do so much singing and piano," Thaya Jaan says.

I stop brushing and strain to hear every word, trying to follow.

"But, Bhai Jaan, she is so talented. Her music teachers say she is really quite gifted."

"Yes, but music is forbidden in Islam. It's a waste of time and has no benefit. Instead of filling her head with music, she should focus on memorizing Quran."

The toothpaste suddenly tastes bitter. I spit it out and wait to hear what Baba will say. Surely he'll say the things he's always told me, like how music makes him feel closer to God and that my talent is a gift from Allah.

But all Baba says is, "Yes, Bhai Jaan," and then he stays quiet.

I am numb. Is Thaya Jaan right? Am I doing something wrong? ~ Hena Khan

when in anger we loose everything .... ~ Amina Ather

But in the years to come, as Muslim prestige and learning sank, and Hindu confidence, wealth, education and power increased, Hindus and Muslims would grow gradually apart, as British policies of divide and rule found willing collaborators among the chauvinists of both faiths. The rip in the closely woven fabric of Delhi's composite culture, opened in 1857, slowly widened into a great gash, and at Partition in 1947 finally broke in two. As the Indian Muslim elite emigrated en masse to Pakistan, the time would soon come when it would be almost impossible to imagine that Hindu sepoys could ever have rallied to the Red Fort and the standard of a Muslim emperor, joining with their Muslim brothers in an attempt to revive the Mughal Empire. ~ William Dalrymple

Amina was not a person who enjoyed anger, nor did she ever hold onto it for very long – she had always had the ability to see a whole series of alternatives to whatever situation she might be in, a quality that made it difficult for her to find anything too upsetting for long. Now as she stood by the table and listened, she knew that nothing fundamental in her life would ever change unless she wanted it to; ~ Shamin Sarif

Don't fall...enjoy your life affair! ~ Amina El Karamany

It was possible to be struck dumb by all sorts of emotions, not only surprise, and as they drove back toward Pittsford, Amina thought that there ought to be a whole set of words to encompass all those different varieties of silence. ~ Nell Freudenberger

Still in the process of becoming, the soul makes room. ~ Amina Cain

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet were hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumulating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to recover from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succumbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to the words of wrong-number callers ... shortly after my tenth birthday (when I had recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after an interval of nearly twenty-one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent practice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number, on urgent shopping trips. ~ Salman Rushdie

If we got caught being in grandma's smaller room without her or without another adult being there, we were surely in for a good old-fashioned ass whipping, Kunta Kinte style. Grandma Bertha didn't play that shit. ~ Amina

Why is it that fathers so often ensure the outcome they are trying to avoid? Is their need to dominate so much stronger than their instinct to protect? Did Thomas know, Amina wondered as she watched him, that he had just done the human equivalent of a lion sinking his teeth into his own cub? ~ Mira Jacob

The fact is that most people naturally like being around people who like their company. ~ Amina Athman

The battle of Panipat was fought for more than what is usually imagined. It was fought by a people in the far south of India, on behalf of the Mughal Emperor, for the defence of India. ~ Uday S. Kulkarni

It's fashion. No one really gets along. ~ Amina Akhtar

One of the reasons for this cataclysmic change of destinies was the inherent weakness of a decaying agricultural empire of the Mughals which after more than two hundred years of rule over vast areas of India, was at its terminal stage and needed a small push to crumble like a house of cards.That push was given by six East India Companies of different European countries which had extracted rights to trade with India from the Mughals but transformed themselves as the arbiters and protectors of several Indian states. In this process they not only became rich but also militarily strong because in the twilight years of the Mughal empire, deteriorating security environment necessitated to arm themselves to protect their economic interests. Because of their inherent superiority as representatives of rising industrial powers, they had access to modern techniques and technology of warfare, which turned out to be the decisive factor in capturing vast territories in India. ~ Shahid Hussain Raja

I write because there is a night a day
dawn dusk shadow and light
and because there will always be seasons to dream

I write because in the beginning
is this planet which welcomes us

I write because the heart's swell
I have never forgotten the sea's rhythm

I also write for love and for the secret place
that haunts us ~ Amina Saïd

An hour later, Amina stood at a pay phone in a mall hallway, where poop and perfume and the grease from the food court formed the kind of atmosphere you might find in Jupiter's red spot ~ Mira Jacob

The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings is done by an individual artist. ~ Salman Rushdie

I wanted to sit quietly in front of the window as the cat did. I wanted to show my excitement like the dog. ~ Amina Cain

I can see where this is going, too. Of course, I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful. ~ Alyssa Brugman

I leave you two things, which, if you hold fast to them shall preserve you from all error: the Book of Allah, and my Sunna. Your downfall begins with your departure from these two. ~ Hajjah Amina Adil

The greatest threat to women (and by extension humanity) is the growth and acceptance of a misogynistic, authoritarian, and violent culture of militarism. ~ Amina Mama

They were both from the real world, their own distinct ones, but I was somewhere in limbo. Set apart, I didn't know how to let either of them in. ~ Amina Gautier

He's fine," Kamala said. "It's not like that. You're not listening." "I am listening! You just told me he's delusional, and I'm asking - " "I DID NOT SAY HE IS DELUSIONAL. I SAID HE WAS TALKING TO HIS MOTHER." "Who is dead," Amina said gently. "Obvious." "And that's not delusional? ~ Mira Jacob

With no small amount of trepidation, we walked alone past a colony of black-faced monkeys we'd been told were extremely dangerous. We avoided eye contact and certainly didn't take pictures. And dearly wished our old Sherpa bag-carrying matey was nearby. We visited Gandhi's tomb. We saw saris being printed and hand-knotted carpets being fabricated and negotiated a decent price for a small hand-crafted rug of Mughal design that, as long as we keep the certificate of authenticity safe, should appreciated in value. We witnessed poverty beyond poverty, with 'untouchables' so poor that they are actually outside the caste system, and who can't even afford to live in the unsanitary slums described as 'unfit for human habitation. ~ Karl Wiggins

And now, restored to the status of daughter in her own home, Amina began to feel the emotions of other people's food seeping into her - because Reverend Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personality of their creator; Amina ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination. And, although Mary's pickles had a partially counteractive effect - since she had stirred into them the guilt of her heart, and the fear of discovery, so that, good as they tasted, they had the power of making those who ate them subject to nameless uncertainties and dreams of accusing fingers - the diet provided by Reverend Mother filled Amina with a kind of rage, and even produced slight signs of improvements in her defeated husband. ~ Salman Rushdie