AYAH SHANTA:

1)‘Can any dough-faced English’s son match his spice? Their looks lack
salt!’
2)‘A ton of washing … And I haven’t even dusted Baijee’s room!’
3)Ayah shouts: ‘Put him down at once, oye, badmash! I will go to the
cinema.’
4)‘What’s it to us if Jinnah, Nehru and Patel fight? They are not
fighting our fight,
5)Ayah, says, ‘Funny things are happening inside the old city …
Stabbings … Either the police can’t do anything – or they don’t want
to.
6)A body was stuffed into a manhole in my locality … It was
discovered this morning because of the smell: a young, good-looking
man.
7)Several bodies have been found in the gutters and gullies of the
Kashmiri, Lahori, and Bhatti Gates and Shalmi …
8)They must have been dumped there from different neighborhoods
because no one knows
who they are.’
9)‘If all you talk of nothing but this Hindu-Muslim business, I’ll stop
coming to the park,’
10)‘Because y’all do “kaan! kaan!” at the top of your voices like a
rowdy flock of crows,’
11)‘I’m already yours, ’says Ayah with disturbing submission. ‘I will
always be yours.’
12) ‘Now look what you’ve done,’
ICE CANDY MAN (DILNAWAZ):
1)‘Then why don’t you wear Punjabi clothes? I’ve never seen you in
shalwar-kamize.’
2)‘Look! Little sparrow singing, “See? See? I free!” to mad-with-grief
wife!’
3)‘If we want India back, we must take pride in our customs, our
clothes, our languages … And not go mouthing the got-pit sot-pit of
the English!’
4)‘Arrey, you foolish Sikh! You fell right into the Hindus’ trap!’
5)‘It’s just a discussion among friends,’
6)‘If you await court decisions, you wait forever,’
7)‘Then he said: “You’re a Mussulman … The tenants are Mussulmans
… Why should you help a Sikh?”’
8)‘Lenny child, be a good girl,’
9)‘Just watch. You’ll see a tamasha!’
10)‘If you must know, I was! I’ll tell you to your face – I lose my senses
when I think of the mutilated bodies on that train from Gurdaspur …
that night I went mad, I tell you! I lobbed grenades through the
windows of Hindus, and Sikhs I’d known all my life! I hated their guts
… I want to kill someone for each of the breasts they cut off the
Muslim women … The penises!’
11)‘What if she refuses to leave me?’
12)‘I am her slave, Baijee. I worship her. She can come to no harm
with me.’
LENNY:
1)I’m still trembling from the thunder of his angry roars – and now I
shiver also from the cold.
2)‘If your sister knows so much, how come she could not even pass
her Matric exam?’
3)“Poor Daddy works so hard for us. When I grow up, I will work in
the office, and he can
read his newspaper all day!”’
4)‘Everybody in the world lies, steals and curses except me!’ I shout,
choked with self-pity.
5)‘Why can’t I act like everybody?’
6)I broke plates, cups, bowls, dishes. I smashed livers, kidneys, hearts,
eyes … The path to virtue is strewn with broken people and shattered
China.
7)And I become aware of religious differences.
8)I close my eyes. I can’t bear to open them: they will open on a
suddenly changed world.
9)I try to shut out the voices.
10)I am not too young to know it is an uneasy number.
11)I count us again, using my fingers like Mother does.
12)There is Ice-candy-man, Masseur, Government House Gardener,
Butcher, Sher Singh, the sepoy from the barracks, the wrestler, Yousaf
and Hari who’ve been listening quietly, the Fillets Hotel cook, me, Adi,
and Ayah.
MASSEURE:
1)‘So they sack Wavell Sahib, a fair man! And send for a new Lat Sahib
who will favour the Hindus!’
2)‘If Nehru and Mountbatten are like this,’ ‘then who’s going to hold
our Jinnah Sahib’s hand? Master Tara Singh?’
3)‘Lenny baby, don’t go far.’
4)‘If the Punjab is divided, Lahore is bound to go to Pakistan. There is
a Muslim majority here …’
5)‘Behold! The savage arm of the murderous Sikh!’
6)‘The Sikhs are the fighting arm of the Hindus and they’re prepared
to use it … like when they butchered every single Mussulman from
Ambala to Amritsar a century ago, during the Mogul empire’s break
up.’
7)‘As soon as things quiet down I’ll take you home,’
8)‘I said, if the worst comes to the worst,
9)‘You don’t need to go anywhere,’
10)‘Why do you worry? I’m here.
11)No one will touch a hair on your head.
12)I don’t know why you don’t marry me!’