“I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair collector.""That's good", said Ishvar tentatively. "What do you have to do as a hair-collector?""Collect hair.""And there is money in that?""Oh very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries.""What do they do with it? Asked Om skeptical." "Many different things. Mostly they wear it.Sometimes they paint it in different colors-red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people's hair. Men also, especially if they are bald. In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.”

“Multilate. Ha Ha Ha,' said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. 'Its all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a see saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures. Especially when the foreign hand is always interfering to destabilize us. Did you know the CIA is trying to sabotage the Family Planning Programme?”

“What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

“Oh, Anyone can make a quilt,' she said modestly. 'It's just scraps, from the clothes you've sewn.''Yes, but the talent is in joining the pieces, the way you have.''Look,' Om pointed, 'look at that - the poplin from our very first job.''You remember,' said Dina, pleased. 'And how fast you finished those first dresses. I thought I had two geniuses.''Hungry stomachs were driving our fingers,' chuckled Ishvar.'Then came that yellow calico with orange strips. And what a hard time this young fellow gave me. Fighting and arguing about everything.''Me?Argue?Never.'.........He steeped back, pleased with himself, as though he had elucidated an intricate theorem. 'So that's the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than the square'.”

“...there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror's wand.”

“If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.”