A Passage to India quotes

The very wood seems made of mud, the inhabitants of mud moving. So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil.

Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life.

Inland, the prospect alters. There is an oval Maidan, and a long sallow hospital. Houses belonging to Eurasians stand on the high ground by the railway station. Beyond the railway—which runs parallel to the river—the land sinks, then rises again rather steeply.

As for the civil station itself, it provokes no emotion.

It charms not, neither does it repel.

It is sensibly planned, with a redbrick club on its brow, and farther back a grocer’s and a cemetery, and the bungalows are disposed along roads that intersect at right angles. It has nothing hideous in it, and only the view is beautiful;

It charms not, neither does it repel. It is sensibly planned, with a redbrick club on its brow, and farther back a grocer’s and a cemetery, and the bungalows are disposed along roads that intersect at right angles.

It has nothing hideous in it, and only the view is beautiful; it shares nothing with the city except the overarching sky.

The sky too has its changes, but they are less marked than those of the vegetation and the river. Clouds map it up at times, but it is normally a dome of blending tints, and the main tint blue.

He had as a matter of fact said, “Damn Aziz”—words that the servant understood, but was too polite to repeat.

One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted.

“Then I will write him a letter.”

The temple of another creed, Hindu, Christian, or Greek, would have bored him and failed to awaken his sense of beauty. Here was Islam, his own country, more than a Faith, more than a battle-cry, more, much more …

Islam, an attitude towards life both exquisite and durable, where his body and his thoughts found their home.

His seat was the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left. The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds.

But she did not take the disappointment as seriously as Miss Quested, for the reason that she was forty years older, and had learnt that

Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

She said again that she hoped that something interesting would be arranged for next Tuesday.

Ronny was in high spirits. The request struck him as comic, and he called out to another passerby: “Fielding! how’s one to see the real India?”

“Try seeing Indians,” the man answered, and vanished.

“As if one could avoid seeing them,” sighed Mrs. Lesley.

I really do know the truth about Indians. A most unsuitable position for any Englishwoman—I was a nurse in a Native State. One’s only hope was to hold sternly aloof.”

“Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die,” said Mrs. Callendar.

“How if he went to heaven?” asked Mrs. Moore, with a gentle but crooked smile.

Mrs. Moore, whom the club had stupefied, woke up outside. She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky.

In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars.

A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind.

The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs. Callendar was nice, and then—finding the ground safe—had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain.

Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.

Going to hang up her cloak, she found that the tip of the peg was occupied by a small wasp. She had known this wasp or his relatives by day;

… there were circles even beyond these—people who wore nothing but a loincloth, people who wore not even that, and spent their lives in knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll—humanity grading and drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation can embrace it.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.

So at all events thought old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on the railways, and never came up to the club.

And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorley’s mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps?

He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation.

And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.

And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going too far.

We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.

Perched up on the seat of a dogcart, she would see them. But the force that lies behind colour and movement would escape her even more effectually than it did now.

She would see India always as a frieze, never as a spirit

, and she assumed that it was a spirit of which Mrs. Moore had had a glimpse.

“What I say.

We’re out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them’s my sentiments. India isn’t a drawing-room.

”

“The desire to behave pleasantly satisfies God … The sincere if impotent desire wins His blessing. I think everyone fails, but there are so many kinds of failure.

Good will and more good will and more good will.

Though I speak with the tongues of …”

“I suppose so, I suppose so.” They did not part for a few minutes, but the conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it.

Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life.

Then he would say in respectful yet decided tones, “I don’t think it does to talk about these things, every fellow has to work out his own religion,” and any fellow who heard him muttered, “Hear!”

She must needs pronounce his name frequently, as the greatest she knew, yet she had never found it less efficacious.

Outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence.

And she regretted afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that had caused her to visit India—namely the relationship between Ronny and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming engaged to be married?

It was so with all his opinions.

Nothing stayed, nothing passed that did not return; the circulation was ceaseless and kept him young, and he mourned his wife the more sincerely because he mourned her seldom.

It would have been simpler to tell Dr. Lal that he had changed his mind about the party, but until the last minute he did not know that he had changed it; indeed, he didn’t change it, it changed itself. Unconquerable aversion welled. Mrs.

A piece of brown cardboard and three children—that was all that was left of his wife. It was unbearable, and he thought again, “How unhappy I am!” and became happier.

He had breathed for an instant the mortal air that surrounds Orientals and all men, and he drew back from it with a gasp, for he was young.

“Never, never shall I get over this,” he told himself. “Most certainly my career is a failure, and my sons will be badly brought up.”

Outwardly of the large shaggy type, with sprawling limbs and blue eyes, he appeared to inspire confidence until he spoke. Then something in his manner puzzled people and failed to allay the distrust which his profession naturally inspired.

There needs must be this evil of brains in India, but woe to him through whom they are increased!

The feeling grew that Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent method—interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation.

The feeling grew that Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent method—interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation.

The world, he believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and intelligence

—a creed ill suited to Chandrapore, but he had come out too late to lose it. He had no racial feeling—not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd-instinct does not flourish.

So the leave-taking began. Everyone was cross or wretched. It was as if irritation exuded from the very soil. Could one have been so petty on a Scotch moor or an Italian alp? Fielding wondered afterwards.

There seemed no reserve of tranquillity to draw upon in India.

Either none, or else tranquillity swallowed up everything, as it appeared to do for Professor Godbole. Here was Aziz all shoddy and odious, Mrs.

So the leave-taking began.

Everyone was cross or wretched. It was as if irritation exuded from the very soil.

Could one have been so petty on a Scotch moor or an Italian alp? Fielding wondered afterwards. There seemed no reserve of tranquillity to draw upon in India.

At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible.

It was the song of an unknown bird.

Only the servants understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue.

The bird in question dived into the dome of the tree. It was of no importance, yet they would have liked to identify it, it would somehow have solaced their hearts.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

“McBryde has an illustrated bird book,” he said dejectedly. “I’m no good at all at birds, in fact I’m useless at any information outside my own job. It’s a great pity.”

Trees of a poor quality bordered the road, indeed the whole scene was inferior, and suggested that the countryside was too vast to admit of excellence. In vain did each item in it call out, “Come, come.”

There was not enough god to go round.

The two young people conversed feebly and felt unimportant. When the darkness began, it seemed to well out of the meagre vegetation, entirely covering the fields each side of them before it brimmed over the road.

“Your hand also, please.” He took it, gazed at the flies on the ceiling, and finally announced “Some temperature.”

“I think not much,” said Ram Chand, desirous of fomenting trouble.

“Some; he should remain in bed,” repeated Dr. Panna Lal, and shook the thermometer down, so that its altitude remained forever unknown.

More noises came from a dusty tree, where brown birds creaked and floundered about looking for insects; another bird, the invisible coppersmith, had started his “ponk ponk.”

It matters so little to the majority of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human, desires or decides.

Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed.

It is because you behave well while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to come back just now when I called you. I thought, ‘He has certainly done with me; I have insulted him.’

Mr. Fielding, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves.

But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.” His voice seemed to arise from a dream.

I have insulted him.’ Mr. Fielding, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to.

Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.

” His voice seemed to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal surface, he said, “We can’t build up India except on what we feel.

That was the corollary. And he had to confess that he really didn’t mind, that he was content to help people, and like them as long as they didn’t object, and if they objected pass on serenely.

Experience can do much, and all that he had learnt in England and Europe was an assistance to him, and helped him towards clarity, but clarity prevented him from experiencing something else.

“How did you like the two ladies you met last Thursday?” he asked.

“Plenty of Indians travel light too—saddhus and such. It’s one of the things I admire about your country. Any man can travel light until he has a wife or children. That’s part of my case against marriage.

I’m a holy man minus the holiness.

Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.”

“I can’t be sacked from my job, because my job’s Education.

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals. It’s the only thing I do believe in.

At Government College, I mix it up with trigonometry, and so on. When I’m a saddhu, I shall mix it up with something else.”

Nothing, nothing attaches to them, and their reputation—for they have one—does not depend upon human speech.

It is as if the surrounding plain or the passing birds have taken upon themselves to exclaim “extraordinary,” and the word has taken root in the air, and been inhaled by mankind.

They are dark caves. Even when they open towards the sun, very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber.

a slice of beef upon a distant plate would wreck his happiness. Other people might eat mutton, they might eat ham. But over ham Aziz’ own religion raised its voice: he did not fancy other people eating ham.

Trouble after trouble encountered him, because he had challenged the spirit of the Indian earth, which tries to keep men in compartments.

At last the moment arrived.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home.

India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble, to its uttermost depth.

She calls “Come” through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls “Come” through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined.

She is not a promise, only an appeal.

“I will fetch you from Simla when it’s cool enough. I will unbottle you in fact,” continued the reliable girl. “We then see some of the Mogul stuff—how appalling if we let you miss the Taj!—and then I will see you off at Bombay.

The hues in the east decayed, the hills seemed dimmer though in fact better lit, and a profound disappointment entered with the morning breeze. Why, when the chamber was prepared, did the bridegroom not enter with trumpets and shawms, as humanity expects?

The sun rose without splendour.

He was presently observed trailing yellowish behind the trees, or against insipid sky, and touching the bodies already at work in the fields.

The villagers contradicted her. She had put the word into their minds, and they refused to abandon it. Aziz admitted that it looked like a tree through the glasses, but insisted that it was a black cobra really, and improvised some rubbish about protective mimicry.

Nothing was explained, and yet there was no romance.

Films of heat, radiated from the Kawa Dol precipices, increased the confusion. They came at irregular intervals and moved capriciously. A patch of field would jump as if it was being fried, and then lie quiet. As they drew closer the radiation stopped.

Hospitality had been achieved, they were “his” guests; his honour was involved in their happiness, and any discomfort they endured would tear his own soul.

Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession.

It was only when Mrs. Moore or Fielding was near him that he saw further, and knew that it is more blessed to receive than to give. These two had strange and beautiful effects on him—they were his friends, his forever, and he theirs forever;

“

Friendships last longest that begin like that, I think.

Shall I ever entertain your other children?”

“Miss Quested, fine but foolish. You keep your religion, I mine. That is the best.

Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing, and that was Akbar’s mistake.

”

Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies, and quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed into the roof. “Boum” is the sound as far as the human alphabet can express it, or “bou-oum,” or “ou-boum,”—utterly dull.

Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce “boum.”

Even the striking of a match starts a little worm coiling, which is too small to complete a circle but is eternally watchful.

… the unhappiness and misunderstanding in the world, past, present, and to come, for all the misery men must undergo whatever their opinion and position, and however much they dodge or bluff—it would amount to the same, the serpent would descend and return to the ceiling.

Devils are of the North, and poems can be written about them, but no one could romanticize the Marabar because it robbed infinity and eternity of their vastness, the only quality that accommodates them to mankind.

She tried to go on with her letter, reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that …

“We were having an interesting talk with our guide, then the car was seen, so she decided to go down to her friend.” Incurably inaccurate, he already thought that this was what had occurred.

He was inaccurate because he was sensitive.

He did not like to remember Miss Quested’s remark about polygamy, because it was unworthy of a guest, so he put it from his mind, and with it the knowledge that he had bolted into a cave to get away from her.

“I am delighted with him really, he has made my guests comfortable; besides, it is my duty to employ him, he is my cousin.

If money goes, money comes. If money stays, death comes.

Did you ever hear that useful Urdu proverb? Probably not, for I have just invented it.”

Involved in his own emotions, he broke down. What he had said was both dignified and pathetic, but had it anything to do with Aziz? Nothing at all, if Fielding was right.

It is impossible to regard a tragedy from two points of view

, and whereas Turton had decided to avenge the girl, he hoped to save the man. He wanted to get away and talk to McBryde, who had always been friendly to him, was on the whole sensible, and could, anyhow, be trusted to keep cool.

He had not gone mad at the phrase “an English girl fresh from England,” he had not rallied to the banner of race. He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion.

Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed.

All over Chandrapore that day the Europeans were putting aside their normal personalities and sinking themselves in their community. Pity, wrath, heroism, filled them, but the power of putting two and two together was annihilated.

Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed. All over Chandrapore that day the Europeans were putting aside their normal personalities and sinking themselves in their community.

Pity, wrath, heroism, filled them, but the power of putting two and two together was annihilated.

Terminating the interview, the Collector walked on to the platform. The confusion there was revolting. A chuprassi of Ronny’s had been told to bring up some trifles belonging to the ladies, and was appropriating for himself various articles to which he had no right;

They always do something disappointing. Aziz had tried to run away from the police, Mohammed Latif had not checked the pilfering. And now Hamidullah!—instead of raging and denouncing, he temporized. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters and occasionally jib.

Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on it; the respect and courtesy Fielding himself enjoyed were unconscious acts of propitiation.

He told Hamidullah to cheer up, all would end well; and Hamidullah did cheer up, and became pugnacious and sensible. McBryde’s remark, “If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line,” was being illustrated.

“Oh no, excuse me once again.

Good and evil are different, as their names imply.

But, in my own humble opinion, they are both of them aspects of my Lord. He is present in the one, absent in the other, and the difference between presence and absence is great, as great as my feeble mind can grasp.

… years he came to the Marabar Hills, where he was thirsty and wanted to drink but saw a thirsty cow and ordered the water to be offered to her first, which, when done, “dagger fell from his hand, and to commemorate miracle he built Tank.”

Professor Godbole’s conversations frequently culminated in a cow.

Fielding received this one in gloomy silence.

He flipped his forehead hard with his fingernail, and they all realized that he felt as deeply as they did, and they loved him, and determined not to increase his difficulties. “Act upon that fact until there are more facts,” he concluded. “

Assume every Indian is an angel.

”

What miscreant lurked in them, presently to be detected by the activities of the law? Who was the guide, and had he been found yet? What was the “echo” of which the girl complained? He did not know, but presently he would know.

Great is information, and she shall prevail.

It was the last moment of the light, and as he gazed at the Marabar Hills they seemed to move graciously towards him like a queen, and their charm became the sky’s.

Everything now was transferred to the surface of her body, which began to avenge itself, and feed unhealthily. People seemed very much alike, except that some would come close while others kept away. “

In space things touch, in time things part

,” she repeated to herself while the thorns were being extracted—her brain so weak that she could not decide whether the phrase was a philosophy or a pun.

Why can’t this be done and that be done in my way and they be done and I at peace? Why has anything to be done, I cannot see. Why all this marriage, marriage? …

The human race would have become a single person centuries ago if marriage was any use.

And all this rubbish about love, love in a church, love in a cave, as if there is the least difference, and I held up from my business over such trifles!”

The unspeakable attempt presented itself to her as love: in a cave, in a church—Boum, it amounts to the same. Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but—Wait till you get one, dear reader!

The abyss also may be petty, the serpent of eternity made of maggots

; her constant thought was: “Less attention should be paid to my future daughter-in-law and more to me, there is no sorrow like my sorrow,” although when the attention was paid she rejected it irritably.

they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. The annual helter-skelter of April, when irritability and lust spread like a canker, is one of her comments on the orderly hopes of humanity.

Fish manage better; fish, as the tanks dry, wriggle into the mud and wait for the rains to uncake them.

But men try to be harmonious all the year round, and the results are occasionally disastrous.

Her aim this morning was to announce, meticulously, that the strain was appalling, and she would probably break down under Mr. Amritrao’s cross-examination and disgrace her friends. “My echo has come back again badly,” she told them.

“It is not a headache, it is an echo.”

Unable to dispel the buzzing in her ears, Major Callendar had diagnosed it as a fancy, which must not be encouraged. So the Turtons changed the subject. The cool little lick of the breeze was passing over the earth, dividing night from day;

He further announced that he should give up his British-conferred title, and live as a private gentleman, plain Mr. Zulfiqar, for which reason he was instantly proceeding to his country seat. The landau turned, the crowd accompanied it, the crisis was over.

The Marabar caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a district.

“We will have rejoicings tonight,” the old man said. “Mr. Hamidullah, I depute you to bring out our friends Fielding and Amritrao, and to discover whether the latter will require special food. The others will keep with me.

For her behaviour rested on cold justice and honesty; she had felt, while she recanted, no passion of love for those whom she had wronged.

Truth is not truth in that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again, unless the Word that was with God also is God.

And the girl’s sacrifice—so creditable according to Western notions—was rightly rejected, because, though it came from her heart, it did not include her heart. A few garlands from students was all that India ever gave her in return.

The other smiled, and looked at his watch. They both regretted the death, but they were middle-aged men, who had invested their emotions elsewhere, and outbursts of grief could not be expected from them over a slight acquaintance.

It’s only one’s own dead who matter.

If for a moment the sense of communion in sorrow came to them, it passed.

How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones?

The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little she does understand, she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there.

Fielding had met the dead woman only two or three times, Hamidullah had seen her in the distance once, and they were far more occupied with the coming gathering at Dilkusha, the “victory” dinner, for which they would be most victoriously late.

The banquet, though riotous, had been agreeable, and now the blessings of leisure—unknown to the West, which either works or idles—descended on the motley company.

Civilization strays about like a ghost here, revisiting the ruins of empire, and is to be found not in great works of art or mighty deeds, but in the gestures well-bred Indians make when they sit or lie down.

Fielding, who had dressed up in native costume, learnt from his excessive awkwardness in it that all his motions were makeshifts, whereas when the Nawab Bahadur stretched out his hand for food or Nureddin applauded a song, something beautiful had been accomplished which needed no …

“

Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out?

Am I a machine? I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.”

“Because it is far better you put all your difficulties before me, if we are to be friends forever. You do not like Mrs. Moore, and are annoyed because I do; however, you will like her in time.”

When a person, really dead, is supposed to be alive, an unhealthiness infects the conversation.

Fielding could not stand the tension any longer and blurted out: “I’m sorry to say Mrs. Moore’s dead.”

Fielding said no more. Facts are facts, and everyone would learn of Mrs. Moore’s death in the morning.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead.

As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality. An experience of his own confirmed this.

Sometimes it was a cow that had been killed—or a crocodile with the tusks of a boar had crawled out of the Ganges.

Nonsense of this type is more difficult to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when no one is looking.

At one period two distinct tombs containing Esmiss Esmoor’s remains were reported: one by the tannery, the other up near the goods station. Mr. McBryde visited them both and saw signs of the beginning of a cult—earthenware saucers and so on.

Moore. What does happen to one’s mother when she dies? Presumably she goes to heaven, anyhow she clears out.

Ronny’s religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics.

Wherever he entered, mosque, cave, or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the Fifth Form, and condemned as “weakening” any attempt to understand them. Pulling himself together, he dismissed the mater from his mind.

Victory, which would have made the English sanctimonious, made them aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no existence. They suffered from the usual disillusion that attends warfare.

The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same; the latter have their value and only the saint rejects them, but their hint of immortality vanishes as soon as they are held in the hand.

Although Sir Gilbert had been courteous, almost obsequious, the fabric he represented had in no wise bowed its head. British officialism remained, as all-pervading and as unpleasant as the sun;

Were there worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness? They could not tell. They only realized that their outlook was more or less similar, and found in this a satisfaction.

Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell.

Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are one, and the universe they mirror is one. They had not the apparatus for judging.

“Don’t let it become too real, or you’ll die yourself. That is the objection to meditating upon death. We are subdued to what we work in. I have felt the same temptation, and had to sheer off. I want to go on living a bit.”

A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air.

Both man and woman were at the height of their powers—sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied.

“

There is no such person in existence as the general Indian.

”

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “We are not in the law courts.

There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

”

Aziz had no sense of evidence. The sequence of his emotions decided his beliefs, and led to the tragic coolness between himself and his English friend.

They had conquered but were not to be crowned. Fielding was away at a conference, and after the rumour about Miss Quested had been with him undisturbed for a few days, he assumed it was true.

“

Yes, but the scale, the scale. You always get the scale wrong, my dear fellow.

A pity there is this rumour, but such a very small pity—so small that we may as well talk of something else.”

“It simply doesn’t affect me.

Spies are as thick as mosquitoes, but it’s years before I shall meet the one that kills me.

You’ve something else in your mind.”

Tangles like this still interrupted their intercourse. A pause in the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole conversation went awry. Fielding had been startled, not shocked, but how convey the difference?

There is always trouble when two people do not think of sex at the same moment, always mutual resentment and surprise, even when the two people are of the same race.

He began to recapitulate his feelings about Miss Quested. Aziz cut him short with: “But I believe you, I believe. Mohammed Latif shall be severely punished for inventing this.”

This reflection about an echo lay at the verge of Fielding’s mind. He could never develop it. It belonged to the universe that he had missed or rejected. And the mosque missed it too. Like himself, those shallow arcades provided but a limited asylum.

“There is no God but God” doesn’t carry us far through the complexities of matter and spirit; it is only a game with words, really, a religious pun, not a religious truth.

He found Aziz overtired and dispirited, and he determined not to allude to their misunderstanding until the end of the evening; it would be more acceptable then.

Fielding was conscious of something hostile, and because he was really fond of Aziz his optimism failed him.

Travelling light is less easy as soon as affection is involved.

Unable to jog forward in the serene hope that all would come right, he wrote an elaborate letter in the rather modern style: “It is on my mind that you think me a prude about women. I had rather you thought anything else of me.

They would see the sumptuousness of Venice, not its shape, and though Venice was not Europe, it was part of the Mediterranean harmony.

The Mediterranean is the human norm.

When men leave that exquisite lake, whether through the Bosphorus or the Pillars of Hercules, they approach the monstrous and extraordinary; and the southern exit leads to the strangest experience of all.

God is not born yet—that will occur at midnight—but He has also been born centuries ago, nor can He ever be born, because He is the Lord of the Universe, who transcends human processes.

He is, was not, is not, was.

He and Professor Godbole stood at opposite ends of the same strip of carpet.

… State had composed were hung where they could not be read, or had twitched their drawing-pins out of the stucco, and one of them (composed in English to indicate His universality) consisted, by an unfortunate slip of the draughtsman, of the words, “God si Love.”

God si Love. Is this the first message of India?

continued the choir, reinforced by a squabble behind the purdah curtain, where two mothers tried to push their children at the same moment to the front. A little girl’s leg shot out like an eel.

Did it succeed? Books written afterwards say “Yes.” But how, if there is such an event, can it be remembered afterwards? How can it be expressed in anything but itself?

Not only from the unbeliever are mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them.

He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time.

Did it succeed? Books written afterwards say “Yes.” But how, if there is such an event, can it be remembered afterwards? How can it be expressed in anything but itself? Not only from the unbeliever are mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them.

He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time.

A cobra of papier-mâché now appeared on the carpet, also a wooden cradle swinging from a frame. Professor Godbole approached the latter with a red silk napkin in his arms.

He had not to wait long.

In a land where all else was unpunctual, the hour of the Birth was chronometrically observed.

Three minutes before it was due, a Brahman brought forth a model of the village of Gokul (the Bethlehem in that nebulous story) and placed it in front of the altar. The model was on a wooden tray about a yard square;

How inadequate! But each according to his own capacities, and he knew that his own were small. “One old Englishwoman and one little, little wasp,” he thought, as he stepped out of the temple into the grey of a pouring wet morning.

“It does not seem much, still it is more than I am myself.”

“God si love!” There is fun in heaven. God can play practical jokes upon Himself, draw chairs away from beneath His own posteriors, set His own turbans on fire, and steal His own petticoats when He bathes.

By sacrificing good taste, this worship achieved what Christianity has shirked: the inclusion of merriment.

All spirit as well as all matter must participate in salvation, and if practical jokes are banned, the circle is incomplete. Having swallowed the butter, they played another game which chanced to be graceful: the fondling of Shri Krishna under the similitude of a child.

Many of them were in the palace at this moment, having the time of their lives; others, too large or proud to travel, had sent symbols to represent them.

The air was thick with religion and rain.

Their white shirts fluttering, Ahmed and Karim ran about over the fort, shrieking with joy. Presently they intersected a line of prisoners, who were looking aimlessly at an old bronze gun. “Which of you is to be pardoned?” they asked.

All the time the palace ceased not to thrum and tum-tum. The revelation was over, but its effect lasted, and its effect was to make men feel that the revelation had not yet come.

Hope existed despite fulfilment, as it will be in heaven.

Although the God had been born, His procession—loosely supposed by many to be the birth—had not taken place. In normal years, the middle hours of this day were signalized by performances of great beauty in the private apartments of the Rajah.

hanging upside down all the day, they had grown thirsty. The signs of the contented Indian evening multiplied; frogs on all sides, cow-dung burning eternally; a flock of belated hornbills overhead, looking like winged skeletons as they flapped across the gloaming.

There was death in the air, but not sadness; a compromise had been made between destiny and desire, and even the heart of man acquiesced.

The European Guest House stood two hundred feet above the water, on the crest of a rocky and wooded spur that jutted from the jungle. By the time Aziz arrived, the water had paled to a film of mauve-grey, and the boat vanished entirely.