Deepak Malhotra Quotes

“You see, Max, the problem is not that the mouse is in the maze, but that the maze is in the mouse.”

“Knowledge can be acquired from others. Understanding is your own.”

“I have grown up listening to my grandparents’ stories about ‘the other side’ of the border. But, as a child, this other side didn’t quite register as Pakistan, or not-India, but rather as some mythic land devoid of geographic borders, ethnicity and nationality. In fact, through their stories, I imagined it as a land with mango orchards, joint families, village settlements, endless lengths of ancestral fields extending into the horizon, and quaint local bazaars teeming with excitement on festive days. As a result, the history of my grandparents’ early lives in what became Pakistan essentially came across as a very idyllic, somewhat rural, version of happiness.”

“Attitude at work shows attitude in life. If you want to know how people are doing in their lives, watch how they perform in their work. Do they have full commitment in giving their best to whatever they do? Do they treat their very act of being involved in an activity seriously? You can see that people who work halfheartedly are the very same people who get halfhearted results in life. The truth is we are always in a game because life is a game. We either play to win or not.Those who are serious about winning are the ones who do. Most people want to have fun playing the game, but winners are the ones who want to have serious fun. The most fun you can have in anything you do is by playing to win & by winning. The irony of life is that those who are not serious about life, end up in situations that are not funny. Winning results from the intention to win. The stronger your intent to win, the more your probabilities of winning. Playing to win mindset is considered obsolete by many, but you will see that whenever two evenly matched players are competing head to head, the one who is more intent on winning is the one who does. Individuals with strong intention of winning are able to overcome tougher challenges.Intention to win is important.Play to win.”

“Migration is often accompanied by a feeling of unavoidable disorientation, and the circumstances of 1947 would have pronounced this feeling. In most cases, it would have created an involuntary distance between where one was born before the Partition and where one moved to after it, stretching out their identity sparsely over the expanse of this distance. As a result, somewhere in between the original city of their birth and the adopted city of residence, would lay their essence – strangely malleable.”

“Memorialization is not a passive practice but an active conversation.”

“If I considered the Partition an archeological site, and the many experiences of those who witnessed it as the site’s structural sedimentation, then the deeper I excavated, the more I found, and that too in innumerable renditions.”

“Partition memory is particularly pliable. Within it, the act of forgetting, either inevitably or purposefully, seems to play as much a part as remembering itself.”

“A transference of memory was occurring as she, the vessel, the source, wrung every small, muffled detail into me, the depository. And once it began, it was difficult to interrupt or stop”

“We should have realized it sooner, at least my father should have, that there was no coming back. Not in September when the riots died down, not in October when the subcontinent still lay in shock, not even in November as he had hoped and promised us. Lahore was now lost forever”