Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins.

When you treat your failures as lessons, you can never fail.

Believe in your greatness. Because what you believe is what you become.

Everything in this world happens with a purpose. You are born in this world with a purpose, you are chosen by purpose.

Thank people who help you because they make you happy. Thank people who don't help you because they make you strong.

When you have power and use it for destructive purpose: you don't deserve it.

When it's possible for you to dream, it's not impossible to achieve.

You have not failed until you accept your failure.

Don't care about success or failure. Keep doing what you love. Success will follow.

Failure is the greatest teacher.

Every act of goodness is born from our desire to be happy.

It’s beyond your consciousness that your soul lingers with the person you love and hence your mood will affect the one you love. This is the reason why you sometimes sense your mood changing mysteriously with no reason.

There is nothing more amazing than being with the one you love.

There is only one happiness in life. To love, and to be loved

Every act of goodness it's born from our desire to be happy.

Policemen are often confronted with situations which baffle them at first. A certain crime scene may seem meaningless, but they have to derive some meaning out of it. They have to connect the dots, find the links, delve into its history, look for evidence, come up with a zillion theories and arrive at truth. The thing is, truth is always stranger than fiction.

She looked so beautiful, with every smile of hers, I was falling for her. She had the perfect set of teeth for the perfect face to make up that perfect smile.

..now, seated hunched over paper in a pool of Anglepoised light, I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more.

If Allah has willed it that way... He must have better plans for you child...

The time is ripe for young Indian authors writing in the English language.

The three flower shops were obliterated. The petals of the once-dewy flowers and their sellers' flesh burnt together. The people reacted and, unlike the birds, they did not react in unison. They ran towards the narrow streets near the masjid, trampling over the old and limping beggars. They pushed and shoved and cursed and cried. The birds circled in the air, pitying the humans who had lost their humanity.

He could not help but admire his posters every time he saw them---the son of a rickshaw puller, now the chief of a prominent political party in this town, who was expected to win by an unprecedented margin of votes in the coming elections. There were many people in the party who begrudged his presence, his power, but they could do nothing. The people of Amrapur loved him and his speeches. Some people called them inflammatory, divisive, and harmful to the peace and harmony of the town. A smile spread across his face every time he heard that word. Has anything ever been achieved by harmony? What would the leaders do with harmony? Why would people come to listen to his speeches in droves if they wanted harmony? Elections can never be won by harmony.

We may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy.

She liked the way a ray of mild autumn sun infiltrating the thick cluster of trees caught a reddish orange leaf swirling in the wind and transformed it golden yellow. She liked that it wasn’t a leaf she recognised, that she could name or associate with her past.

A community that engages readers and culturally enabled people to connect, support and harness intellectual and cultural capabilities.

Where are the coconut trees bowing allegiance to the wind, the wide open spaces, the verdant green fields?

But he’s an untouchable, Shirin.’ ‘He’s my Untouchable Prince Charming, then. Only I am allowed to touch him.

There’s a great drought in my village. People are dying. The price of rice and pulses has rocketed. There is no water anywhere. And here, people are complaining about the rain...

What am I doing here, Reena? Why am I dancing to the tunes of that old hag?’‘You are saving your family.

Have you been reading those books that clueless illiterate Duja in charge of the lending library lets you borrow?’ ‘No, Ma.’ ‘Then what put you in mind of devils possessing nuns to take over the church?

You are a girl, Shirin. Girls don’t run around naked.’‘Why?’‘They just don’t.

Sometimes, it is easier to leave things as they are, rather than to fight, go against the flow.

You don’t live in luxury! You are relegated to sleep in the little store room behind the kitchen with the cockroaches and rats and are at the mercy of Mrs. Gupta,’ Reena was indignant. ‘It’s five-star accommodation compared to a mud hut.

What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?

I watched the rows and rows of chappals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?

Every family has secrets, Reena, and they’re there for a reason.

I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.

You put cow dung on my face?’ ‘Every day religiously until you were three. Why else do you think your skin is so clear?

What better hiding place than an old, woodlice-ridden album of photographs!