Shamini Flint Quotes

Global warming was to blame according to scientists and the government had promised tough climate goals. Next to the article was another one, lauding the Tata Nano, the ‘one lakh’ car. No one seemed inclined to point out the contradiction between reducing global warming and sticking a bunch of cheap cars on the road ... There was something to be said for the ‘no news is good news’ approach of the Singapore dailies. Certainly, an ordinary day’s worth of news in the Straits Times, tucked in between the advertisements for supermarket chains, cheap holidays and miraculous slimming treatments, didn’t look quite like this.

Women like her, conservative and narrow-minded, were quite willing to believe that someone arrested for pilfering was congenitally pre-disposed to commit more serious crimes, eventually and naturally culminating in murder. In her view, fixating on the evidence for an individual crime was just pedantic. Mind you, Singh had met high court judges with the same attitude. He wondered for a moment why his wife had such faith in the police force in the abstract and so little confidence in his role in it.

Her life had all the ingredients of a Bollywood movie except the happy ending.

“I’m telling you that I knew Ashu. She was like a daughter to me. There is no way she would have killed herself – and in such a way.”
“The police seem quite sure,” he replied.
“The police in India are like a river, Inspector Singh, always taking the path of least resistance.”
Singh decided to save the metaphor for an occasion when he could use it on Superintendent Chen.

The gods were fighting over her children but she could not seek the help of any of them. And she had so much choice. She had grown up a Buddhist, her ex-husband was alleged a Moslem when he died, her own sister was a Christian - so many options for salvation. [...] Chelsea would have settled for solace through prayer. But she did not believe that there was an invisible hand behind the farce that was her life's play. At the very least she did not believe in a benevolent God. [...] Surely it was better to lay the blame for the machinations of fate at the door of chance?

Singh was distracted by a strong and unpleasant smell that suddenly pervaded the airplane. He sniffed cautiously, protruding nostril hairs quivering. It didn’t smell like burning fuel or melting plastic or any of those olfactory sensations that would have caused him to make a dash for the exits. He turned to Mrs. Singh who was reading the in-flight magazine with the disdain of one who preferred to Google her subjects rather than have them pre-selected by an editor. “What’s that stink?” he whispered. “India,” she answered succinctly and then turned her attention back to a gleaming picture of the Taj Mahal resplendent in its manicured gardens, its reflection shimmering in a lake ...

And yet, the inspector thought, Kuala Lumpur had a certain something. It was difficult for him to put his finger on what it was exactly. There was a sense of freedom perhaps, of anarchy even, that Singapore so sorely lacked. Perhaps it was the lack of deference to authority, the physical space, the ability to take a step back and enjoy a moment of quiet that lent Kuala Lumpur its atmosphere.

[Inspector] Singh closed his eyes and contemplated the gloom within. Circles within circles. Would a child of one of these dead men – killed in a holy place – grow up with revenge on his mind like Tanvir Singh had done? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Having accidentally watched ten minutes of a head-waggling, hip-shaking, breast-jiggling extravaganza on television, the inspector wasn’t surprised that thespian qualities were not at a premium. It was disheartening, however, to think that it was skin colour that was of paramount importance instead.

He could have added that many bodies went unclaimed because relatives could not afford a funeral. Men and women left their villages to find work in the cities and were far from loved ones when some accident carried them away. And of course, there were those who were killed in the sudden outbreaks of communal violence – it was difficult to find the family of these victims, many of whom might have died at the same time, escaped to their villages or be too traumatised to search for the missing.

Singh could not help but think that, in a hospital, the proximity of death was best disguised — and the actual dead hidden. It was not conducive to the right frame of mind for recovery to have the morgue signposted for patients. It would be the medical equivalent of 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here'.

In India, Inspector Singh, life is sometimes very cheap.

There had been encroachments by Pakistani troops over the line of control in Kashmir. Editorials solemnly urged the government to adopt a firm stance. Right, thought [Inspector] Singh. Two nuclear powers adopting a ‘firm’ stance was definitely the right way forward.

He suspected they did it not just because of their voracious appetite for tropical hardwoods and the money that it brought in, but because of a visceral fear that someday they might have to acknowledge that they were wrong. Everything they had sought and bought had not brought them happiness, let alone contentment. [...] It was better to destroy the potential source of such unpalatable truths than have them live to witness the lives of quiet desperation of their tormentors.

Rupert did not understand why the parasites in cities did not understand the most fundamental tenet of nature - that a parasite eventually kills its host. Did these people not know that if they continued to feed and spread and grow, with the tendrils of their greed wrapping themselves around their host, the day would come when it could no longer sustain them and when it died they would too?