Manjul Bajaj > Quotes

“Whatever wisdom I have has been hard-earned – each meaning carefully culled out of the dictionary of human experiences and emotions and put in its precise place in the matrix. Meaning doesn’t come easy. The Great Crossword Setter in the Sky is capricious and wilful, demanding absolute obedience. You can waste the better part of a lifetime arguing about the randomness of the clues, the setting of the squares, why a certain square is black and not white as you need it to be, question the whole point of doing the crossword – what, after all, is to be gained by solving it. Only after all the chattering is over and you give your complete attention to it, does the perfection of the pattern reveal itself. As is, where is, everything fits. And at the end, when it’s all done, there is no reward to be had – the joy of doing it right is all the reward there ever is. (A Deepavali Gift)”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“Years don't age a man - experiences do that.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“There is no greatness in dying for love, Raakha, she wanted to say. Those who die untimely, violent deaths don’t become ashes. They become guilty scars on the flesh of the living. They become wounds that never heal no matter how much time passes.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Come, Before Evening Falls

“History remembers only the names of the conquerors. There are no pages devoted to the scruples of the losers.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Come, Before Evening Falls

“The only crime is getting caught. Don't ever commit it.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“A well-worn marriage was like a shop-soiled currency note. Its only fault was that it had been in circulation for too long – it didn’t smell fresh, feel crisp to your fingers and fill you with a sense of possibilities as you held it in your hand, like a newly minted, fresh-from-the-press one did. (Lottery Ticket)”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“We are more than our feelings. Feelings are like leaves and flowers on the tree of our being. They are the first to dance in the breeze, the first to blossom in springtime, the first to sparkle in the rain. But come the cold and frost, we discover that the bare branches of our values and the roots of our traditions are the structure we stand on.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Come, Before Evening Falls

“Time is like a barber, it shears you first and then shows you your own face in the mirror. (Marrying Nusrat)”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“She will not believe me if I tell her love is all anyone ever needs. Everything else – the fast cars, the private aeroplanes, the mansions, the diamonds, the watches, the fancy clothes, the perfect bodies, the publicity, the awards, the applause – all are ways of filling the emptiness created by the lack of love.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“A girl is never born alone. From birth she is accompanied by two invisible twin sisters named Lajja and Sharm. Lajja is the older of the twins, split seconds ahead. She whispers warnings, advises modesty, advocates caution. Sharm is the nasty number, the tattletale, the teaser, the guilt-tripper.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“You can have no idea what it feels like to live in an ordinary woman’s skin. From the moment a girl is born she is tutored by her mother on what she may and may not do. The list of what she is allowed to do keeps on shrinking as she grows older—cover your head, lower your neck, conceal your breasts, hide your ankles, don’t go to the river alone, don’t step out in the evening, don’t laugh loudly, don’t ask questions, don’t expect answers … Then she marries and it only gets worse. A mother-in-law takes over to enforce the rules. Wake up first, sleep last. Cook feasts, eat leftovers. Feed sons, starve daughters. And when finally she grows older and the baton passes on to her, she starts battering the next generation with it, having seen nothing else in her life!’ ‘So are you saying women oppress women?’ I was surprised that her tirade was directed at mothers and mothers-in-law rather than at men. ‘Yes, precisely. Why blame the men alone? Why will they try to change an existing order in which they get a bonded slave to cook their food, wash their clothes, clean their homes, warm their beds, look after their aging parents and bear them children? But what reason do women have? Why do they fall all over themselves to tyrannise other women? Women can rescue each other. Women can refuse to starve, scare and suppress their daughters. They can be friends and comrades with their daughters-in-law. Women can look out for the safety of their house maids and farm labourers. Women can insist that other women be treated with respect and dignity. But for that they first need to stop feeling helpless and scared themselves. They need to stop needing a man to protect them. The price of that protection is just too high.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“A well-worn marriage was like a shop-soiled currency note. Its only fault was that it had been in circulation for too long – it didn’t smell fresh, feel crisp to your fingers and fill you with a sense of possibilities as you held it in your hand, like a newly minted, fresh-from-the-press one did.”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“The world hates those who do not conform. It is easier to forgive liars and cheaters, thieves and murderers than to tolerate someone who does not aspire to the same things as others.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“The difference between the hero and bandit lies not in how well each wields the sword but in the cause to which their weapon is drawn.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“Honour is like a tiger that men of our ilk have been riding for centuries. We think it adds to our glory but in the end it only turns its head back, tosses us down and devours us.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“You speak wildly in the sway of your emotions. You wish that the rules of society should be rewritten so that you can carry on conveniently with your lover. The world was not constructed to do our bidding. We have to live by its rules. If individual passions were allowed to run the world we would all be living in chaos.’ ‘Better a chaotic world in which people are happy than an orderly one in which love has no place,’ said Heer. ‘This world was created out of Allah’s love for his creatures. Take love out of it and life becomes like a mouthful of ashes—dry, tasteless and impossible to swallow.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“I picked up the flute and let my torrent of longing for Heer pour out of me. It emerged as a young, swift, heedless mountain brook tripping, falling and gushing down towards the ocean of love. As I played on, the nature of love made itself known to me. Our individual love stories are but the waves rising from and falling back into the vast, infinite sea of love from which the universe was created. The outburst of clouds as rain, the tumult of springs and the restlessness of rivers finally all belong to the ocean. We are all one water—rain, river, cloud, tears, blood and sea. All love bears the Creator’s signature. The name I knew God by was now Heer. I could not put another name in its place.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“To possess love is to be vulnerable to loss. To have too much happiness is to tempt fate.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“She will not believe me if I tell her if love is all anyone ever needs. Everything else... are all ways of filling the emptiness created by the lack of love!”
― Manjul Bajaj, Another Man's Wife and Other Stories

“What is social class anyway but a man-made prison,”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“You ask Heer to be severed from Ranjha but what is a kite without its string? I will flutter and fall to the ground, a dead, useless thing.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“It intrigues us, this human notion of a ‘fairer sex’. Male pigeons can’t be told apart from female pigeons on the basis of colour. The concept of the ‘weaker sex’ is even more incomprehensible to us. Male and female pigeons equally grunt, growl, peck and flap their wings to protect their nest and their young ones against threats. And the division of labour in our species is something that humans would do well to look at. Even the hatching of eggs is done collaboratively. The female pigeon sits on the egg from mid-afternoon to the morning. In the morning, the male takes over and is on duty till mid-afternoon. Both sexes take turns in feeding their baby chicks by regurgitating food into their mouths. And no self-respecting, able-bodied male pigeon would think it was his female partner’s job to serve him food. And yet, human beings are considered the more advanced of the two species. At least in their own lexicon.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“As long as there are men around offering to protect them, women have everything to be scared of. She was better off fighting her own battles.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“There is something in your voice that stops me. I feel as if it knows me better than I know myself. As if it knows ways into my heart to which I myself am not privy. That it will know how to buoy me up when I’m drowning, heal me when I’m wounded, put me together when I’m broken,”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“Gossip is society’s watchman, wall and whip all at once. Tale by malicious tale, rumour by rumour, the wall of society’s narrow morality is erected. Inside it is the cosy warmth of belonging. Outside, it is brutally cold and lonely.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“Deprive a peasant of his harvest with a flash of the sword once and it is called robbery. Do it at random intervals and it’s described as banditry. Do it systematically, year after year, backed by swordsmen in uniforms, and it is called governance.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“I needed to leave. How else would I have met Heer? Better a hundred deaths for Heer than a life without her.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“Ranjha, have you ever stopped to think why a girl’s place in the world is so small, why a woman’s work is constantly belittled or why she is considered inferior to men, even though she is the one who gives birth to them and raises them? I’ll tell you why. Because if she leaves her father or husband’s house she might be physically harmed, she might be dragged into a field or an alley and raped, she might be sold to a brothel, she might be carried off by bandits or by enemy soldiers and kept as a sex slave. So she learns, like generations of women have done before her, to trade her freedom for security, her dignity for physical safety. She chooses to live with a hundred little insults to her spirit every day instead of the threat of that one big assault on her body. In the end it all boils down to not being helpless.’ ‘And carrying a sword makes you feel less helpless?’ ‘Not just feel less helpless. It makes me less helpless.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer

“You speak wildly in the sway of your emotions. You wish that the rules of society should be rewritten so that you can carry on conveniently with your lover. The world was not constructed to do our bidding. We have to live by its rules. If individual passions were allowed to run the world we would all be living in chaos.’ ‘Better a chaotic world in which people are happy than an orderly one in which love has no place,’ said Heer.”
― Manjul Bajaj, In Search of Heer