Cobalt Blue Quotes

“How did I acquire those habits? Perhaps that's what happens during he forging of a relationship: if nothing else, you adopt some of the other person's habits. It makes you feel those adoptions, make him one of you.

Have you picked up habits from me? Do you draw circles with a finger on your thali when you have finished eating? Do you, every once in a while, squeeze shaving cream on to your toothbrush? DO you sleep with a knee drawn up to you, the bedclothes kicked away? Do you fold the newspaper neatly and put it where you found it, when you are done?

Yesterday, when a cobalt blue smudge of wall ended up on my hand, I wiped on my trouser without thinking.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra.
Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Those who choose differently must suffer the consequences. They must take the pain their decisions bring.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“When you're looking for a relationship, the process weakens you. you feel you have to bear with whatever the other person wants. Each of the people I have met has made this a little more clear.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I sometimes go and sit there. it is my museum of broken things.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I felt the kind of peace you feel when you come in from a hot afternoon and pour cold water over your feet.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Once you start living together and you see the same person day in and day out, you begin to wonder: was it for this I struggled and toiled? Did he feel that way?”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Whatever happens, happens for the best.' That's how any domestic counselling starts in a Marathi family. Everyone in every family has an inner psychiatrist who rises to the occasion with some home-made mottos, a few lines from Jagjit Singh ghazal. An older generation may quote Tukaram but underlying all this is the bedrock phase: Whatever happens, happens for the best.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Such colours, such colours. When you breathe out, I see red and yellow flashes in front of my eyes. When we’re in the bath together, surrounded by a surfeit of steam, it’s a misty blue. When the sun is shining and we look at each other from a distance, and we smile, it’s white, a shining white. If I’m talking to someone and mention you, my face changes, it’s a dark blue. Dark brown when I call out to you; peaceful green when you call out to me.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“When I think about my childhood, I feel the best times came before one began to seek pleasure in the bodies of others.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“That you should not be here when something we've both wanted happens is no new thing for me. Today too, as always, you're not here.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I'd be staring at you and thinking, I should ask, I should ask, I should ask; do you want to be in a stable monogamous relationship for the rest of your life?”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“You began what you described as your accomplished solitude from that day. This term—accomplished solitude—struck me deeply. And it slowly began to dawn on you that you did not need people around you when you were painting or reading, when you were watching a film with deep concentration, or when you sat down to eat, chewing every mouthful and savouring every flavour. You made loneliness easy on yourself.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I wonder if I should believe what she says. But when you're not strong in yourself, anyone can tell you anything and you'll fall for it.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I didn't like Dali: now, like you, I do. Like you, I began to drink my Coke with a pinch of salt . Like you, I stopped bothering about ironed clothes. Like you, I sit with a dictionary while reading the papers. Like you, I sit on the compound wall after a bath.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I have started to feel that the friends you make in school, the ones you've known forever, begin to turn into fossils. They merge into their families, losing all identity.You don't know the new ones as much as you should. They can fool you.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“At the meeting you behaves exactly as Marathi novelists of the last century tell is husbands do in sari shops.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“We would both have liked this moment. We knew that it would be ours one day. But it is now mine alone.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“From then on, right up to this day, I fear that I walk funny, in other words, that I walk like a woman. When I find myself walking at my own pace, I almost immediately slow down. And I learned what men do not do. They do not wet their dry lips by running their tongues over them. They don’t trot after their mothers into the kitchen. They don’t use face powder. They don’t sit on a motorbike behind a woman. They don’t need mirrors in the rooms where they might change their clothes. On trips, they can go behind a tree. They don’t even need an enclosed space to take a dump; they can do it in the open. They shouldn’t be afraid of other people seeing their bodies. If there’s only one bathroom, they can bathe in the open. When caned in class, they do not cry. They do not buy tamarind from the lady who sells it on the road and they certainly do not sit by her side and eat it.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“How did I acquire those habits? Perhaps that’s what happens during the forging of a relationship: if nothing else, you adopt some of the other person’s habits. It makes you feel those small adaptations, those adoptions, make him one of you.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I have only met men like you in novels, men who lived their own idiosyncrasies.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I have only men like you n novels, men who lived their own idiosyncrasies.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I took my clothes out of the cupboard and looked at myself in the mirror. I dropped the wet towel. i took a long, clear-eyed look at myself. that i was different was nowhere apparent.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“When they left, I saw four or five black-and-white photographs I had taken of you, peeping from the file. They'd faded a little over time and were stuck to each other. Delicately, i separated them.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Once i watched you wake up, you had the same frown. "When one gets up, there is a moment when everything looks odd and strange.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“One of the fundamental rights of mankind should be that of wearing as many or as few clothes as one likes inside one's own home.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“From then on, write up to this day, I fear that I walk funny, in other words, that I walk like a woman. When I find myself walking at my on pace, I almost immediately slow down. And I learnt what men do not do. They not wet their dry lips by running their tongues over them. They don't trot after their mothers into the kitchen. They don't use face powder. They don't sit on a motorbike behind a woman. They don't need mirrors in the rooms where they might change their clothes. On trips, they can go behind the tree. They don't even need an enclosed space to take a dump; they can do it in the open. They shouldn't be afraid of other people seeing their bodies. If there is only one bathroom they can bathe in the open. When caned in class, I do not cry. They do not buy tamarind rom the lady who sells it on the road and they certainly do not sit by her side and eat it.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“We had a Marathi poem set for us in school. The poet suggested that the walls of your room know you best. As school children, we mocked the poem but now I wonder: what does my wall think of me?”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“Spoil all the walls with sellotape marks.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“To wake quietly from a deep sleep is a rare thing and, when it happens, you can almost imagine that the world had begin again, at least for a few seconds. Or so you said.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue