Bombay Quotes

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
― Martin Luther King Jr

“I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“In international commerce, India is an ancient country-(19th October, 1899)”
― Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

“I know now that it's the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“...wearing a turban of yellow, signifying knowledge, and a robe of purple, portraying purity and activity, Virchand Gandhi of Bombay delivered a lecture on the religions of India....”
― New York Times

“Maybe I should go home. I miss Bombay. But the Bombay I miss isn't there to go home to anymore. This is who we are. We sail away from the place we love and then because we aren't there to love it people go with axes and burning torches and smash and burn and then we say, Oh, too sad. But we abandoned it, left it to our barbarian successors to destroy.”
― Salman Rushdie, Quichotte

“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.”
― Khushwant Singh, Truth, Love & A Little Malice

“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.”
― Amrita Mahale, Milk Teeth

“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.”
― Jerry Pinto, Em and The Big Hoom

“He looked at me with a smile that I still remember and ran a finger along his impeccably trimmed mustache. “Cricket is about a lot more than playing by the rules, Mistry. It’s a gentleman’s game. Don’t you ever forget that.”
― Ken Doyle, Bombay Bhel

“Cricket is about a lot more than playing by the rules, Mistry. It’s a gentleman’s game. Don’t you ever forget that.”
― Ken Doyle

“...he stayed on the balcony for a while, the throbbing energy of the chawls filling his veins as he watched traffic ebb and flow. Shutters veiled the shops on the ground floor across the lane, and only a few lights flickered here and there, probably other mill workers like his father.

(from Aam Papad)”
― Ken Doyle, Bombay Bhel

“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)”
― Ken Doyle, Bombay Bhel

“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.”
― John Blaine, The Phantom Shark

“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.”
― Pier Vittorio Tondelli

“This is not India. There are people here from every part of India, but Bombay isn't India. Bombay is an own-world, a world in itself. The real India is out there.”
― Gregory David Roberts Shantaramoberts Shantaram

“In the city of Ahmedabad where I live, a flight to Karachi takes less time than flying to Bombay, but arbitrary and tyrannical borders have made Sindh inaccessible to me in more ways than one.”
― Rita Kothari, Unbordered Memories : Sindhi Stories Of Partition

“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.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“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.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“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.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“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.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“This was The City, India's biggest, a huge city, but people heard and responded to what was happening in your life. Sometimes, this much was enough.”
― Jerry Pinto, Em and The Big Hoom

“You could put all the French or Italian you wanted in their names, but you couldn't take Mumbai out of the buildings: the clothes drying outside the windows would remain, and so would the mud streaks from flowerpots on windowsills.”
― Amrita Mahale, Milk Teeth

“There was plenty of anger on offer in Mumbai and it was easy to look away. But every once in a while, someone with imagination crafted their fury like origami into something delightful.”
― Amrita Mahale, Milk Teeth

“It will be okay, you will be okay. They call this the spirit of Bombay.”
― Amrita Mahale, Milk Teeth

“He had often thought of Bombay as the museum of failures, an exhibit hall filled with thwarted dreams and broken promises.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Museum of Failures

“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.”
― Devika Rege, Quarterlife

“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

“I dreamed of returning to my beloved Bombay—not Mumbai—and kneeling to kiss the tarmac as I came down from the plane, but when I looked up there was a crowd shouting at me, “Dafa ho.” Begone.”
― Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder