Vikas' past actions
After his two sons are killed, Vikas questions his actions in the past: “Every way he turned, his past was detonated, revealing tunnels and alternative routes under the packed, settled earth of the present. For every decision, there were a million others he could have made. For every India, a Pakistan of possibilities.”
A jail is like a school
Jagdish Chacha, a former cabinet secretary, reveals that there is corruption in many areas of the public sector: “Technically this is not allowed, but a jail is like a school—if you know the principal you can do anything.”
The Khuranas
The Khuranas are described as a tight-knit family whose dreams and nightmares seem to be connected at night as well. Tushar, one of the sons, sums it up: “We’re like tightly packed molecules.”
Accountancy exams
Education, particularly higher education, is described as hostile, comparing studies to a military campaign where failure could be fatal, and not just in the figurative sense: “The years of your chartered accountancy exams were years of nervousness, where you were still a child. You had a constant sense of falling. You were in the trenches with your guidebooks but when you came out you were on your own, dodging multiple-choice bullets.”
Mansoor's pain
When Mansoor is in the US studying computer science, his left wrist starts to ache so much that every keystroke feels like a painful expedition: “His wrist could barely continue on its journey along the valleys and plateaus of the keyboard.”
