August An Indian Story Quotes

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

To be an Indian writer is to write, necessarily and inevitably, about politics, so it was a given that the story of the Ghoshes, the family at the centre of 'The Lives of Others,' should have a political soul. ~ Neel Mukherjee

A friend of mine who spent years in India with a great teacher from the ancient forest tradition tells a moving story... Years after his beloved teacher had died, he was back in India staying at the home of his guru's most devoted Indian disciple.

"I must show you something," the disciple said to my friend one day. "This is what he left for me." My friend was excited, of course. Any trace of his teacher was nectar to him. He watched as the elderly man opened the creaking doors of an ancient wooden wardrobe and took something from the back of the bottom shelf. It was wrapped in an old, dirty cloth.

"Do you see?" he asked my friend.

"No. See what?"

The disciple unwrapped the object, revealing an old, beat-up aluminum pot, the kind of ordinary pot one sees in every Indian kitchen. Looking deeply into my friend's eyes, he told him, "He left this for me when he went away. Do you see? Do you see?"

"No, Dada," he replied. "I don't see."

According to my friend, Dada looked at him even more intensely, this time with a mad glint in his eyes.

"You don't have to shine," he said. "You don't have to shine." He rewrapped the pot and put it back on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe.

My friend had received the most important teaching... He did not have to transform himself in the way he imagined: He just had to learn to be kind to himself. If he could hold himself with the care Dada showed while clutching t ~ Epstein Mark

There is an Indian story
at least I heard it as an Indian story
about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down ~ Clifford Geertz

TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

begum Dil Afroze was a well-known opportunist who believed, quite literally, in changing with the times. When the Movement seemed to be on the up and up, she would set the time on her wristwatch half an hour ahead to Pakistan Standard Time. When the Occupation regained its grip she would reset it to Indian Standard Time. In the Valley the saying went, 'Begum Dil Afroze's watch isn't really a watch, it's a newspaper.

Q 1: What is the moral of the story? ~ Arundhati Roy

I have a cousin who is a spiritual advisor for Native veterans in Canada, so I'm very familiar with the history of Natives in the military. And growing up as an American Indian myself, the story of Ira Hayes is one that is often told. ~ Adam Beach

There is a marvellous Indian story of a boy who leaves home in search of truth. He goes to various teachers, walking endlessly in various parts of the country, every teacher asserting something or other. After many years, as an old man, after searching, searching, asking, meditating, taking certain postures, breathing rightly, fasting, no sex and all that, he comes back to his old house. As he opens the door there it is: the truth is just there. You understand? You might say, 'It wouldn't have been there if he hadn't wandered all over the place.' That's a cunning remark, but you miss the beauty of the story if you don't see that truth is not to be sought after. Truth is not something to be attained, to be experienced, to be held. It is there for those who can see it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

There was too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance - but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we'd die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I'd mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow. ~ Tarun J. Tejpal

I engage with New York and America but my parents pretty much hang out in this radius of Long Island where their friends are and where their work is. That's why you have people who have lived in New York for like 20, 30 years who don't speak English. They just live in a Chinese community or an Indian community. More than anywhere you'll find that in Queens. ~ Himanshu Suri

Every August, I go away for four weeks to a place in Michigan. I work in the mornings, spend the month in shorts and flip-flops. It gives me time to think like an investor and come back in September for some heavy planning. ~ Joe Mansueto

If you're looking for an Inspiration, then I think Rahul Mahajan is a perfect example for all the fainthearted people out there who fear to show their talent. Many people around us assume themselves as "not so special" person and people will laugh at them if they perform in public. I've seen Rahul Mahajan in a reality show of dancing, which is no way related to him. He is been asked to dance various dance forms, but the fact is he doesn't have the body language to perform like a dancer. His dances make people laugh, and his mistakes in the performances are taken as humor. Rahul never thinks about the results or what the audiences are thinking and keep on performing. Not only that but he is a favorite contestant of all the judges and the audiences too. The power is his honesty, hardwork, innocence, ego-less and he enjoys every bit of his performance to the core. I think that's the reason why he's successful and lives in the heart of the Indian Audiences. Hats off to your spirit Rahul Mahajan. :) ~ Ritesh Rangare

Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

She sauntered in the August rain
With an endless rhythm of pain,
With a desire to run
To reach his arms that warmed her,
Like sweet summer's sun! ~ Natasha Jain

I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie mice, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak. ~ Sitting Bull

I've always wanted to take a swim wherever it is they snap those screensaver photos - Fiji? Bora Bora? The Maldives? - and sleep in a hotel room that's more of a hut built on a dock over the water. After reading The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, I'm dying to see the sun set in Botswana. I want to visit Indian temples and volunteer at an elephant sanctuary. ~ Jen Lancaster

Now there are some, and I don't just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. There's just us and an ocean of darkness around us. I'm no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. That's not to say I don't respect them, Mr. Premier! Don't you ever let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull. My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time. ~ Aravind Adiga

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character. ~ Salman Rushdie

Aunt Esther: You think you supposed to know everything. Life is a mystery. Don't you know life is a mystery? I see you still trying to figure it out. It ain't all for you to know. It's all an adventure. That's all life is. But you got to trust that adventure. ~ August Wilson

From my bed I can see the moon tonight, so bright and ripe and salmon pink it looks as if it might drop from the sky. I imagine pirates on deck just before sunrise with the wood groaning and the moonlight streaking across the water in a straight line from the horizon. Did Caesar see the moon exactly so as he strode down the Roman Forum on the way to some debaucherous celebration? And what about Moses and Galileo and some wretched young Londoner pulling a cart full of corpses during the plague? or an American Indian crouched by a fire in a small clearing surrounded by huge primeval trees that glow orange from the flame? ~ Jonathan Hull

Whenever I get an audition to do something that is sci-fi-related, it makes me really happy because I realize that I can continue doing the work that I'm doing and continue meeting people all over the world. It does baffle my management team sometimes, though! ~ J. August Richards

The word 'Indonesia' was first manufactured in 1850 in the form 'Indu-nesians' by the English traveler and social observer George Samuel Windsor Earl. He was searching for an ethnographic term to describe 'that branch of the Polynesian race inhabiting the Indian Archipelago', or 'the brown races of the Indian Archipelago'. ~ R.E. Elson

Nothing as white as the white girl an Indian boy loves. ~ Sherman Alexie

If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Black men, Indian men, and gay men have all have something in common: They do not provide an economic security blanket for women. ~ Warren Farrell

The American Indian was an individualist in religion as in war. He had neither a national army nor an organized church. ~ Charles Eastman

Fort McNamara stood in the Arkansas River Valley near the Indian Territory border, its citizens declaring it to be the last white civilization for hundreds of miles. But civilization was an ironic choice of words for the place as far as Kit was concerned. ~ Sandra Jones

Old Timer Farmer's Wisdom in Haiku
Keep skunks, city slickers,
Jews, lawyers at a distance
Or else ya' get fucked.

Life is simpler when
You plow around the stump
Or else ya' get fucked.

If you don'tknow bees
Are faster than your tractor
Ya' gonna'get fucked.

Do your pissing down
Stream and your drinking upstream
Or else ya' get fucked.

Fences need to be
Horse-high, pig-tight,bull-strong
Or else ya' get fucked

Cheat an Indian
Out of his liquor money
Ya' gonna get stabbed. ~ Beryl Dov

I would like to bury myself in an Indian village, preferably in a Frontier village. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

She put her hands together and Saul hoped she wasn't about to say -
'Namaste,' said CC, bowing. 'He taught me that. Very spiritual.'
She said 'spiritual' so often it had become meaningless to Saul.
'He said, CC Das, you have a great spiritual gift. You must leave this place and share it with the world. You must tell people to be calm.'
As she spoke Saul mouthed the words, lip-synching to the familiar tune.
'CC Das, he said, you above all others know that when the chakras are in alignment all is white. And when all is white, all is right.'
Saul wondered whether she was confusing an Indian mystic with a KKK member. Ironic, really, if she was. ~ Louise Penny

It's an universal law
intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Croft
East Dene, Sussex


August 11th, 1922


My dear Watson,

I have taken our discussion of this afternoon to heart, considered it carefully, and am prepared to modify my previous opinions.
I am amenable to your publishing your account of the incidents of 1903, specifically of the final case before my retirement, under the following conditions.
In addition to the usual changes that you would make to disguise actual people and places, I would suggest that you replace the entire scenario we encountered (I speak of Professor Presbury's garden. I shall not write of it further here) with monkey glands, or a similar extract from the testes of an ape or lemur, sent by some foreign mystery-man. Perhaps the monkey-extract could have the effect of making Professor Presbury move like an ape - he could be some kind of "creeping man," perhaps? - or possibly make him able to clamber up the sides of buildings and up trees. I would suggest that he grow a tail, but this might be too fanciful even for you, Watson, although no more fanciful than many of the rococo additions you have made in your histories to otherwise humdrum events in my life and work.
In addition, I have written the following speech, to be delivered by myself, at the end of your narrative. Please make certain that something much like this is there, in which I inveigh against living too long, and the foolish urges that push foolish people to do foolish things t ~ Neil Gaiman

It is the same game that Moonlight Graham played in 1905. It is a living part of history, like calico dresses, stone crockery, and threshing crews eating at outdoor tables. It continually reminds us of what was, like an Indian-head penny in a handful of new coins. ~ W.P. Kinsella

We owe an historic debt to American Indians. They have a unique set of concerns that haven't been addressed, and I'd like to stand with them. Also, I'd like to get their views on immigration. ~ Al Franken

I fantasize about everything; being a fireman, an Indian chief, climbing mountains. Anything is possible. ~ Ted Turner

In a great number of the cosmogonic myths the world is said to have developed from a great water, which was the prime matter. In many cases, as for instance in an Indian myth, this prime matter is indicated as a solution, out of which the solid earth crystallized out. ~ Svante Arrhenius

I collect firearms, and I've got a Winchester, an Indian rifle. It has tacks for every warrior that was shot, like notches on a pistol, and it's got feathers and beads hanging off it. It's like a work of art. ~ Joe Perry

Gandhi is an example of a man who grew from being self-centered as he was learning to become a lawyer in England, to becoming more family- and social oriented in South-Africa, where he led a reformation of Indian rights, to becoming determined in helping his nation recover from British rule at which he succeeded in the end with the help of a great many people. At the end of his life Gandhi was increasingly focused on a larger picture, encasing the whole world in his vision of a peaceful future. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times - and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. When ~ Mark Twain

And this is how we danced: with our mothers'
white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair - my hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your father's tantrum turned

into heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart

there are two headless people building a burning house.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.

Always another hour to kill - only to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,

the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we've traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue. ~ Ocean Vuong

Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we'll be able to do that is to gain our freedom. ~ Russell Means

The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space.

You will find the clearest parallels in Indian philosophy, especially in Yoga.

In your case the feeling is reinforced by your psychological studies.

The assimilated unconscious apparently disappears in consciousness without trace, but it has the effect of detaching consciousness from its ties to the object.

I have described this development in my commentary on the Golden Flower. It is a sort of integration process and an anticipation of consciousness.

The cross is an indication of this, since it represents an integration of the 4 (functions).

It is perfectly understandable that, when consciousness detaches itself from the object, the feeling arises that one does not know where one stands.

Actually one is standing nowhere, because standing has a below and an above.

But there one has no below and above at all, because spatiality pertains to the world of the senses, and consciousness possesses spatiality only when it is in participation with that world.

It is a not-knowing, which has the same positive character as nirvana in the Buddhist definition, or the wu-wei, not-doing, of the Chinese, which does not mean doing nothing.

The profound doubt you seem to be suffering fr ~ C.G. Jung

New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Sonia Gandhi and her son play an important part in all of this. Their job is to run the Department of Compassion and Charisma and to win elections. They are allowed to make (and also to take credit for) decisions which appear progressive but are actually tactical and symbolic, meant to take the edge off popular anger and allow the big ship to keep on rolling. (The best example of this is the rally that was organised for Rahul Gandhi to claim victory for the cancellation of Vedanta's permission to mine Niyamgiri for bauxite - a battle that the Dongria Kondh tribe and a coalition of activists, local as well as international, have been fighting for years. At the rally, Rahul Gandhi announced that he was "a soldier for the tribal people". He didn't mention that the economic policies of his party are predicated on the mass displacement of tribal people. Or that every other bauxite "giri" - hill - in the neighbourhood was having the hell mined out of it, while this "soldier for the tribal people" looked away. Rahul Gandhi may be a decent man. But for him to go around talking about the two Indias - the "Rich India" and the "Poor India" - as though the party he represents has nothing to do with it, is an insult to everybody's intelligence, including his own.)

The division of labour between politicians who have a mass base and win elections, and those who actually run the country but either do not need to (judges and bureaucrats) or have been freed of the constraint of winn ~ Arundhati Roy