Quotes From Twilight in Delhi

8/17/2019 Quotes From Twilight in Delhi

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Quotes from "Twilight in Delhi" by Ahmed Ali

"Delhi was once a paradise,Such peace had abided here;But they have ravished its name and pride,

emain now only ruins and care!"Bahadur Shah

"I'm the light of no one's eye,The rest of no one's heart am I.That which can be of use to none.~Just a handful of dust am I.

#hy should they come to visit my graveAnd waste upon my dust a wreath$#hy should they light a lamp at night$

The grave of helplessness am %!

For I am not a soulful tuneWhy should anyone hear it?I'm the cry of a sticen soul,The !ain of a broen heart am I..."

"The night is dar&, the waves rise mountains high,And such a storm is raging'#hat do the pedestrians &now my plight movingupon the shore that is safe and dry'"

"If her heart has now become soft it matters notIf the strong has become wea it matters not.#ranted your red li!s are the source of life,$ut if they ser%e not the lo%er they matter not."

"(y despair does not &nowThe turnings of the wheel of time;The days turned disastrous&nows neither dus& or dawn")halib

"I'%e lost religion in &uite a no%el way,Throwing faith for drunen eyes away

(nd all my life in !iety s!ent I'%e flung (t the altar for the idol)worshi!er's *oy.."

"*ife inflicts wounds on men, but, they become whole and hale again! +ate treathuman beings with cruelty and is unconcerned! Death ta&es lives, part lovers,bereaves mothers and children, husbands and wives, and ,with callousindifference, goes about her ravages with the hard hearted grace of a fell belovedwho prides herself on brea&ing both hearts and homes!"

"This world is a house of many mirrors. Where%er you turn, you see your own images inthe glass. They multi!ly and become innumerable until you begin to feel frightened ofyour own self."

"+or if it were not for ope, men would commit suicide by the scores, and theworld would remain a barren desert in which no oasis e-ists! .n this torturousroad of life, man goes on hoping that he ne-t turn of the road will bring him insight of the goal! Thus from turn to turn!!!he &eeps on hoping!"

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"#reat are the ra%ages of Time, and no one can do anything against its indomitablemight. +ings die and dynasties fall. enturies and aeons !ass. $ut ne%er a smile lightsu! the inscrutable face of Time. -ife goes on with a heartless continuity, tram!ling idealsand worlds under its ruthless feet, always in search for the new, destroying, building anddemolishing once again with a meaningless !etulance of a child who builds a house ofsand only to rae it to the ground..."

"%n the world there is love and beauty,But there is only blame for me/Along with the rivers % weep and cry,The deserts are dreary dead and dry!"(% TAQ% (%

Style in "Twilight in Delhi" by Ahmed Ali

Twilight in /elhi !ro%ides a real and accurate !ortrait of the static and decaying tradition

of culture of /elhi while the $ritish arranged the coronation /urbar of 0100 and draw u!

!lans for new im!erial city, new /elhi, the no%el has !lanned at re%eal interconnecting

le%els and has been !raised for its lucid style, its use of symbolism and the manner in

which it merges the life of its main !rotagonist, 2ir 3ihal with that of the family. 2uch

attention has also been !arcel to this feeling that it had uni%ersal a!!eal because it

focuses on the rhythms life birth marriage deaths, which are intrinsic to e%ery culture.

0se of metaphor/

Twilight in /elhi maces e4tensi%e use of meta!hor, it begins with the descri!tion of the

city,

12ight envelops the city, covering it li&e a blan&et3 in the dim straight roofs and

wrapped in a rustle slumber breathing heavily as the heat become apprentice or

shoots through the body li&e pain! %n the by came on the road men sleep on bare

bed, half na&ed tired of for the sore days capture A few still wal& on the other wise

deserted roads, hand in hand, tal&ing and some have 4asmine garlands in their

herds, the smell from the flower escapes scents a from yards of air around bythem and alias smothered by the heat dogs so about sniffing the gutter in search

of offal!5

The linguistic de%iation does, it may be concluded, !resent the ethos of the culture the

no%el !ur!orts to !ortray. If this is the idiom which (frican and Indian 5 I mean sub6

continental here 7 writers want to e%ol%e 8 something not as biarre as the language of

(mos Tutola nor as $ritish as the idiom of 9.:. 3ai!aul;(hmed (li has gi%en them a

model of what may be achie%ed.

6thos of %ndian (uslims

(nother way in which the ethos of Indian 2uslims has been con%eyed is by maing the

characters &uote !oetry. (s o!!ola !oints out

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1%t is a custom of long standing among 0rdu 3 spea&ers to 7uote lines of poetry

copiously, appropriately, and energetically in order to emphasi8e, to ma&e a point

in conversation, or to add elegance to speech and writing!5

0se of couplet/Thus it would be nae re!lies by &uoting someone else=s cou!let which

does not re!resent his real feelings but is merely an elegant way of re!lying to any

&uery

-ife has become a burden, the time is ri!e for death.

The s!ace of e4istence has shrun into a narrow cell 5.@A7

The cou!let is merely used for ornamentation and factitious dramatiation of

common!lace disa!!ointment in lo%e. The function of !oetry was mostly rhetorical in

Brdu s!eaing culture and that is how been used by the characters. The cou!lets are.

Therefore, clichCs which substitute a hacneyed formula for an intellectual res!onse to

a gi%en e4!erience. $ut of course, the cou!lets !refacing cha!ters are intellectually

rele%ant and emotionally e%ocati%e.

2ost of the cou!lets used by narrator e4!ress the ethos of the Brdu)s!eaing middle

class. (nd this class had a distinct world %iew. ( world %iew which was essentially

romantic in eighteen nineties . Three &ualities can be discerned in this s!ecial world

%iew nostalgia, sublimation of se4ual feelings into %ague aestheticism, and world

weariness. ( !ose of wistfulness, ennui and *adedness com!lement these three

dominant &ualities. (nd all these are found in most of the %erses &uoted. For instance

%5 m the light of no man9s eye,

The rest of no one9s heart am %!

That which can be of use to none

:ust a handful of dust am %!

These inds of cou!lets the theme of regret for a dying culture directly. The self !ity in

the !oetry is, of course, a reflection of the self !ity which was a !art of the Indian ethos

before the !artition. (hmed (li=s no%el has been able to catch this as!ect of Indian

culture faithfully.

+alse sense of diffidence

Dne as!ect of the male)dominated Brdu s!eaing culture which has not been re%ealed

out of a false sense of modesty by most other writers, but which has been re%ealed by

(li, concerns the se4ual emotion. (s I ha%e mentioned abo%e, se4 was su!!ressed or

sublimated. $ut, mainly because women were in !urdah 5behind the %eil7, it too

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unusual forms. It too, for instance, the form of celebrating the beauty of boys rather

than that of women in !oetry. Thus the sown on the face 5hat7 became a con%entional

attribute of the belo%ed. Dne reason for doing this was that in Iran, where the ghaal

had its genesis boys did actually become the belo%eds of certain !oet. The other

reason was that when ersian mystic !oets started writing lo%e !oetry symboliing thesouls= &uest for merging with the :oul of #od, the symbol they chose for the belo%ed

was that of a beautiful youth rather than a woman. Dn the other hand the Indian

mystics, 2uslims and >indus, re!resented #od as the lo%er and the soul as the woman

who desires union. (s Brdu !oetry followed ersian fashions the belo%ed was

addressed by the male !ronoun and had some of the !hysical attributes of adolescent

boys 5such as hat7 though it was often clear otherwise that a woman was being

referred to. This literary fashion, and !erha!s the absence of women, led to tal

between men becoming full of homose4ual innuendoes. (li, with relentless honesty, tells

us about this as!ect of 2uslim culture.

>e tells us, for e4am!le, that when (sghar li%es in $ho!al as an adolescent youth, he

was the belo%ed of men

>e had *ust to cast a glance and there were many who would ha%e gi%en their li%es to

do his bidding. (t the least sign from him they would ha%e done anything. Then he was

the bestower of fa%ours there he was the lo%ed one and not the lo%er. To be lo%ed is

sweet, he thought, whereas to lo%e is full of sorrow and grief and !ain 5T/, @E7.

We are also told that a man called >uoor (li was de%oted to him= 5!.@E7 and if (sghar

had ha!!ened to loo at him indly e%en one there had a!!eared such *oy on his face=

5!. @E7. When >uoor (li in%ites (sghar or dinner and (sghar refused and refused until

the old man was broenhearted= 5!.@G7 the lo%er recites these lines

#ould to )od that arat 2ahboob Hlahi

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and >arat (mir +husro= 5T/, 0G7. The audience listens to this with religious emotion

because the two saints mentioned are re%ered by all. (t its most %ulgar, of course, the

nature of the emotion is !urely sensual. In Dur -ane=, for instance, 2unno tells (i

% had a cousin! The boy was rather handsome! %t was about ten years ago! % sort of fell out with him over a &iss =>, ?@!

This is said seriously but most allusions to se-ual feelings of this &ind are

fictitious! Sometimes there is open buffoonery/

As he an old manC crossed Asghar, his stic& unwittingly touched the old man9s

behind! As once he turned round and remar&ed/

% say, moonbridegroom, even with an old man$ E!

A eunuch who sat on the balcony 4ust above in the hope of some stray customer,

clapped loudly in a vulgar way and gave a loud guffaw =p!FG!

And sometimes the humour is more refined but, in fact behind the humour there

is se-ual flirtation as in the following scene/

And the lovers found the opportunity of their lives! A middle aged man 7uoted

these lines of an young man with arms open for an embrace, E

%t is the day of 6id, my dear,

Ah come, let me embrace thee!

%t is the custom and besides

There9s time and opportunity

What is e%en more remarable is that the narrator offers no comment on these scenes.

That maes (hmed (li one of the few Indian writers who could re%eal such tabooed

areas of Indian life without either falsifying reality or !reaching as 2uslim. >owe%er,

unfortunately, (li does offer !latitudinous comments of a moralistic ind at some !laces

and this flaw of his wor must not go unnoticed.

ealism

To continue with the discussion of the &uality of (li=s realism in Twilight, it has been

noted that he !resent the cor!orate life through the minor characters who hel! to create

the illusion that one is in India, the land of the crowded houses in which something is

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always going on. (s 3i%en says, the no%el is full of ser%ants, beggars and craftsmen=. In

fact no other no%el catches the nuances of the 2uslims culture in /elhi as con%incingly

as twilight. Dne can find out all about the details which mae a culture come ali%e in

(li=s descri!tions. (nd the descri!tions are not as if they were a !art of a documentary,

they from an organic whole and are, therefore, artistically successful whereas those of:cented /ust were intrusions. In this res!ect Twilight re!resents an as!ect of Indian

culture as successfully as hinua (chebe=s 3o%el Things Fall (!art re!resents (frican

culture, a !oint made by (nniah #owda in as article.

ealistic portrayal of culture and traditions

The no%el e%oes the culture of /elhi through describing customs and ceremonies

minutely and 8 says $rander 8 the fine wedding cha!ter reads lie an e!ithalamium in

which %erse and !rose alternate in wonderfully refreshing bridal music=. H%en the

beggars are described and their songs and mannerisms mae them concrete !resences

and not allude to the su!erstitions of the time he does so in a manner which re%eals his

own beliefs. For instance, +ambal :hah, a Fa&ir who %isits 2ir 3ihal, is described as

follows

e was said to be high up in the mystical order although no one &new his hidden

spiritual powers, for such fa7irs never reveal themselves to human beings !

The italicied line seems to suggest that the narrator shares in the belief or 2ir 3ihal

and his friends. :ince there is no indication that the author was deliberately

distinguishing himself from the narrator in this instance, one may assume that (li to

belie%es in this. Dn the other hand 2ir 3ihal also belie%es that mercury can be

con%erted into sil%er but here he narrator shows his own se!ticism by correcting 2ir

3ihal credulity when he says et no one really did it. :till 2ir 3ihal belie%ed in its truth

and went on ho!ing against ho!e= 5!.0@A7. this suggests that the narrator, and by

im!lication the author, had shed off some of the beliefs and ways of looing at life of the

2uslim gentlemen of B. but not all a conclusion which will hel! us to understands the

theme of the no%el.

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Quotes From Twilight in Delhi