I couldn’t weep here, any more than I could hope. Of course he couldn’t stay: and much as I wanted him by me, I wanted even more that my friend have what he wanted for himself.

He is a comrade; he was a friend when my own people did not want me.

I waited for him to come out. He didn't. I considered going in after him, but knew the fact that I had readied myself to kill him did not mean that he had readied himself to die.

I told you I didn’t want to go. Of course, I really did want to go, but I just said I didn’t want to go so you’d beg me to go and I could feel needed. I’m needy like that.

A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one?

He killed himself for wanting to live.

He had come to tell his brother that power corrupts, that a man who fights for justice must himself be cleansed and purified, that love is greater than force. And none of these things had he done. God have mercy on me, Christ have mercy on me. He turned to the door, but it was locked and bolted. Brother had shut out brother, from the same womb had they come.

This man, our brother, never purposely killed a living thing until he put the pistol to his head. Poor dead dreamer, you are not the first or last mortal to learn the truth [...] I have dreamed my dreams, had my illusions and wakened from my sleep. Why do I not follow him? I do not end it all because the love of life and the shrinking fear of death in all living things stays my hand and my courage fails.

"Do you think you should help him?"
"Yes," he said, "I thought we were going to."
"How?" I asked.
"By taking him fishing with us."
"I've just told you," I said, "he doesn't like to fish."
"Maybe so," my brother replied. "But maybe what he likes is somebody trying to help him."

He could not pass an executive order to call even a soldier to stop the riots. Pressure was built on him by various Sikh organisations to quit...[but] he took the conscious decision in the larger interest of the nation in general and Sikh community in particular to stay put.

And he couldn't do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here.

There's some that came here never believing they were dead. They insisted all the way that they were alive, it was a mistake, someone would have to pay; made no difference. There's others who longed to be dead when they were alive, poor souls; lives full of pain or misery; killed themselves for a chance of a blessed rest, and found that nothing had changed except for the worse, and this time there was no escape; you can't make yourself alive again.

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?

I kept asking myself if there was anything I could have done. Perhaps if I had stepped in, he would still be alive