Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line Quotes

What is a whole life? If you die when you’re still a child, is your life whole or half or zero?

The poem wants to know why the moon is sliced in half on some days and why it‘s a circle in other days. The worst thing about the poem is that it doesn‘t answer it‘s own question.

Our gods are too busy to hear our prayers, but ghosts - ghosts have nothing to do but wait and wander, wander and wait, and they are always listening to our words because they are bored and that‘s one way to pass the time.

I like to spy on other families that are sad like ours because I want to find out if they are doing anything different to stop ghosts from clutching their bones.

Believe me,' the badshah says, 'today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We are just specks of dust in this world, glimmering for a moment in the sunlight, and then disappearing into nothing. You have to learn to make your peace with that.

Just because you read books doesn't mean you know everything," Faiz tells her. "I work. Life's the best teacher. Everyone says so." "Only people who can't read say such things," Pari says.

Ma said Bahadur's ma was unlucky in marriage but was lucky in work, and that everyone had something going right and wrong in their lives--their good or bad children, kind or cruel neighbors, or an ache in the bones that a doctor could cure easily or not at all--and this was how you knew the gods at least tried to be fair.

Believe me," the badshah says, "today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We are just specks of dust in this world, glimmering for a moment in the sunlight, and then disappearing into nothing. You have to learn to make your peace with that.

We believe djinns moved into this palace around the time our las kings died, their hearts broken by the crooked victories of white men who claimed to be our rulers. No one knows where the djinns came from, if Allah-Ta'ala sent them, or if they were summoned here by the feverish utterances of the devout. They have been here for so long, they must watched the walls of this palace crumble, the pillars soften with moss and creepers, and pythons slither over cracked stones like dreams wavering in the light of dawn. Every year they must feel the wind trembling the champa trees in the garden, shearing flowers as fragrant as vials of attar.

This isn't happening. This is happening. God is twisting a screwdriver under my skin, not stopping for a break.

We need ghosts more than anyone else, maybe. Because we are railway station boys without parents and homes. If we are still here, it is only because we know how to summon ghosts at will.

Maybe Pari is so quick at coming up with lies because she has read many books and has all their stories in her head.

It was as if she existed solely to care for her brother and a house. Afterwards, she would similarly look after her husband. Her hands smelling of cow dung cakes. Her own dreams were inconsequential. It seemed to her that no one could see the ambition that thrummed in her. No one imagined her becoming someone.

Vehicles zoom past us but they don't sound loud anymore. A glass wall has come up between me and the world.

I can smell Runu-Didi on her clothes and her pillow that has acquired a dip in the middle from the weight of her head. If I stare at it long enough, the snatcher or the bad djinn who has caught Didi will let her go. I stare and stare. My eyes hurt, but I don't look away.

Since he had been born, she had considered Jai with a blend of loathing and admiration; it seemed to her that he had a way of softening the imperfections of life with his daydreams and the self-confidence that the world granted boys (which, in girls, was considered a character flaw or evidence of a dismal upbringing).

Bahadur's ma stays close to my ma, but she tiptoes around her as if she's afraid she'll step on Ma's sadness, which must be the same size and shape as Bahadur's ma's sadness, only a lot fresher.

Believe me,” the badshah says, “today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We are just specks of dust in this world, glimmering for a moment in the sunlight, and then disappearing into nothing. You have to learn to make your peace with that.

only rich people throw clothes away when there’s still life left in them.

Tomorrow is exam day. Exams seem unreal, like they belong to another world. In our world we are doing daily battle with djinns and kidnappers and buffalo-killers and we don‘t know when we will vanish.

„You shouldn‘t be trying to sow divisions in this community,“ Papa says, which sounds like something a good newsperson would say on TV.

If this is how the new year starts, imagine how it will end,” someone says. I had even forgotten it was new year.

Vehicles zoom past us. But they don’t sound loud anymore. A glass wall has come up between me and the world.

Our house is full of bad dreams.

It’s good for the police, right? They don’t have to lift a finger. If anything happens to us, it’s because we did it ourselves. If a TV goes missing from our homes, we stole it. If we get murdered, then we killed ourselves.

Since he had been born, she had considered Jai with a blend of loathing and admiration. It seemed to her that he had a way of softening the imperfections of life with his his daydreams and the self confidence that the world granted boys. Which, in girls, was considered a character flaw or evidence of a dismal upbringing.

And she didn’t know what she would do without them. Without hope, without dreams.

Tucking his cape behind him, Omvir thought of how others considered Bahadur's stutter a weakness, something to be mercilessly mocked, a sign of sins committed in past lives. But Omvir himself had seen it as a source of strength, much like the two thumbs Hrithik Roshan had on his right hand. He believed the actor's rhythm, the deftness with which he could manipulate his legs and torso and hands to the beats of a song--as if he had no spine, no bones--came from the extra appendage that others thought freakish. What was God-given couldn't be a mere imperfection; it was a gift. Omvir wanted to believe there was a reason for everything. Otherwise, what was the point?