Raghu Karnad > Quotes

“People have two deaths: the first at the end of their lives, when they go away, and the second at the end of the memory of their lives, when all who remember them are gone. Then a person quits the world completely.”
― Raghu Karnad

“Few survivors carried anything, except for anguished tales of their abandonment by the Raj. Lying in their cholera beds, they told of Anglo-Indian families whose darker-skinned daughters were turned away from camps for Europeans; of columns of Indian refugees held back until Europeans had passed, so the roads would be less begrimed; of elephants struggling up the slopes, hind legs quivering, as they carried mahogany desks out over the bodies of children. The most despised rumour, which travelled well in India, was that the Army enforced separate ‘White’ and ‘Black’ routes: so little did Indian lives count in the end.”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

“have two deaths: the first at the end of their lives, when they go away, and the second at the end of the memory of their lives, when all who remember them are gone. Then”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

“I was accustomed to thinking of the war as Western Front, Eastern Front and Pacific. When I looked through the eyes of Indian soldiers, however, the globe turned, revealing new continents.”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

“Don’t try to be heroes,’ he’d say – but it would not matter, because he had already taught his children to disobey him, and”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

“Churchill gave sermons about a war for freedom, but Orwell provided a sharp retort: ‘The unspoken clause is always: Not counting niggers.”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

“this story is imperfect, live flesh drawn over skeletons rebuilt from scattered bones. But”
― Raghu Karnad, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War