Ashish Khetarpal > Quotes

“Chains that melt into bones become bones.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“When the mind asks endless questions without receiving any concrete answers, it starts attacking the body. It was either that or Shanti’s water had broken.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“But how painful truths are! It is upon us to ask, to beg the mirror to show us the reality. But there should be light no matter where one chooses to look, to search, especially when looking inside one’s own self. No other cavity can be deeper, and darker than one’s self. It is the only place where we shall find all the answers and the only place where we shudder the most before striking a match.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“The women were emboldened by the first opportunity that had ever presented itself in their lives; the chance to take off the yoke and look back at the long slavish distance they had walked. How else could they count their losses? The neck of an ox, carrying a wooden yoke, cannot turn.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“Where did Shanti find the will? It must have been in the garden. An ant and a bird argue over the right to flight. The bird spreads her wings and flies away; the ant sits on an autumn leaf and waits for the wind.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“A garden is man’s attempt to domesticate nature. And a man is man’s attempt to domesticate himself.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“If Kabir had been a Muslim, he would have been certain to receive the promised jannah; if he had been a Christian, he would have been bestowed with whatever eternal treasures are stacked in heaven (or maybe a decent walk on the waters!); if he had been a Hindu or a Buddhist, he would have been granted with mukti from samsara, but his mode de vie was pealed from such religious etiquettes and he was venerated religiously because he adhered to none of these religions but to that of love and humanity alone, the religion of the same tree and the same flower but also that of the bee, for an act of kindness to fulfil there must be someone at the receiving end.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“O how idiosyncratic is this concept of clothes! We put on too many and they call us conservative, bourgeois; we take them off and they say we are low on morals. Clothes were supposed to protect our bodies, not to form and repair our images. Things that we made to protect us in a certain way have sadly ended up destroying us in so many million ways.”
“I agree with you. Clothing the soul is more important than clothing the body.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Give of your love but let not others take it from you.”
“What is this kind of love?”
“It’s like filling a river and not caring who drinks from it because when need be you’ll fill it again.”
“And what if I wish to drink from someone else’s river?”
“Nazanin-am, my sweetest, we’re all like small rivers and streams, starting at a higher plane from behind the mountains of our desires to be with somebody, and we start alone. A stream, a river, aspires to become something more, and so it must bend, not only its way as it cuts into the land, but also its stature. Only then can it hope to join something bigger, grander. But forget not, azizam, not all rivers reach the ocean. The venerable might of the Indus River–the cradle of our civilization and the catafalque of our neighbours–no longer carries itself to the ocean at the Port of Karachi; the river no longer feeds as it once used to, all because it has fed too many, for too long; it has run dry from overuse. It can no longer take in any more lovers. Before anything else, it must first fill itself again. There’s always some water lying at the depths of the driest land, in the earth’s mantle. This water must come to the surface. The philosophy of all life, as an old Red Indian said, starts with water.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“A madman came to me and accused me of killing god. Killing god!
I told him gently that god cannot be killed. He came closer to me, hurling accusations, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. I then told him that the god he
spoke of was in the bottle that he had just emptied, that he had drank down his god, that his god was now inside him.
He was so struck by my words that his lips started to quiver, and his face changed its colour. He moved aside on the pavement and started to prod his uvula to induce vomiting. When he looked at the contents of his regurgitation, he was surprised to see that there was no god, not in the smallest morsels. As his saliva hung from his mouth, he started screaming: “It’s I who have killed god; woe be upon me,” and left the pavement in tears.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“If Kabir had been a Muslim, he would have been certain to receive the promised jannah; if he had been a Christian, he would have been bestowed with whatever eternal treasures are stacked in heaven (or maybe a decent walk on the waters!); if he had been a Hindu or a Buddhist, he would have been granted with mukti from samsara, but his mode de vie was pealed from such religious etiquettes and he was
venerated religiously because he adhered to none of these religions but to that of love and humanity alone, the religion of the same tree and the same flower but also that of the bee, for an act of kindness to fulfil there must be someone at the receiving end.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Why did I cite these texts? Because otherwise I would be deemed madder than I already am. By whom? Well, first of all, by myself. How dare I propose amputation prior to indicating relevant signs of gangrene? Who am I to stand against thousands of years of culture and civilization? I can protect myself either in my madness or in actual evidence.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Why did I cite these texts? Because otherwise I would be deemed madder than I already am. By whom? Well, first of all, by myself. How dare I propose amputation prior to indicating relevant signs of gangrene? Who am I to stand against thousands of
years of culture and civilization? I can protect myself either in my madness or in actual evidence.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Happiness, true happiness, comes when one is done making efforts. No matter how beautiful the canvas is, the wall does not develop hands to hold it. It only strengthens itself to welcome the canvas. This love between the wall and the canvas is bridged with the help of a small but strong nail. Changing too many canvases, too many nails will only weaken the spirit of the wall to receive more of them. It’s the same in human relationships. If a canvas wishes to be taken down, let it be with gladness. Otherwise, that spot will be doomed to remain forever empty, like uprooting not just the plant, and with care, but the entire layer of soil underneath it. Let the hands of life bring a canvas to you. Don’t try to be happy. And stop giving of yourself to others but to yourself alone. You have given too much, Niloofar…You have given too much.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Happiness, true happiness, comes when one is done making efforts. No matter how beautiful the canvas is, the wall does not develop hands to hold it. It only
strengthens itself to welcome the canvas. This love between the wall and the canvas is bridged with the help of a small but strong nail. Changing too many canvases, too many nails will only weaken the spirit of the wall to receive more of them. It’s the same in human relationships. If a canvas wishes to be taken down, let it be with gladness. Otherwise, that spot will be doomed to remain forever empty, like uprooting not just the plant, and with care, but the entire layer of soil underneath it. Let the hands of life bring a canvas to you. Don’t try to be happy. And stop giving of yourself to others but to yourself alone. You have given too much, Niloofar…You have given too much.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Often a weak enemy, mindful of his incapacity to reason his way to a truce, starts off by giving a putative warning; and then, without waiting for a white flag, lights the canon. In this manner–and in his heart–he feels much righteous for having carried out things in the most honourable way.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.4. It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“In my country, our love for curtains is so incredible that we are bent on enjoying everything behind them. And just like we see no good in opening them, we tend as well to ignore the curtains drawn over our eyes.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“If everything around us today is art, then we must either be blind or we ought to be so.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“And this love does not limit itself to show obliquely when the child is a girl. I remember a mother who fed her daughter with so much of her milk that her breasts
sagged so that those of her daughter may grow with sophistication.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“The pavement was my pandemonium, only I was not its Lucifer. I was not a fallen angel. Those who had only heard about me rumoured that my dreadful locks were of Ganges’ length, and my hands equally dirty; that I was somehow capable of curing alien maladies by diving in the patient’s eyes and grabbing the devil by the tail before tossing it out; and that once, I had bedded a gori who, since my sinister lovemaking to
her, had been falling constantly enceinte because I had viciously and designedly released such a large lump of sperm that had bunny-hugged her fallopian tube thereby causing her belly to be inflated as soon as it was deflated.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“And this love does not limit itself to show obliquely when the child is a girl. I remember a mother who fed her daughter with so much of her milk that her breasts sagged so that those of her daughter may grow with sophistication.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories

“Boys become men, and men become stubborn. They insist on carrying all the burdens by themselves when they can easily share them with their women and daughters. We don’t distinguish between mules and hinnies when we load them, do we? So basically, we have given more equality to donkeys than to one another as people. And we are still none the wiser.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“You have to become a thief in order to rob the thief who robbed you.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“I personally think that life has never put you to a real test. That’s why it seems so difficult. An easy life is more dangerous because it doesn’t make you question it. It becomes faithful to you. It tells you what you want to listen and only shows what you want to see. You may call it loyal but it’s like ordering a spaniel to sit when it’s already sitting, and then rejoicing in the effectiveness of your instruction. An easy life doesn’t
burn the coal, my friend.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, The Watchdog and Other Stories