Some Lesser Husbands Built A Latrine On

Out Of Its Squalor And Human Decay, Its Eruptions Of Butchery, India Produced So Many People Of Grace And Beauty, Ruled By Elaborate Courtesy. Producing Too Much Life, It Denied The Value Of Life; Yet It Permitted A Unique Human Development To So Many. Nowhere Were People So Heightened, Rounded And Individualistic; Nowhere Did They Offer Themselves So Fully And With Such Assurance. To Know Indians Was To Take A Delight In People As People; Every Encounter Was An Adventure. I Did Not Want India To Sink [out Of My Memory]; The Mere Thought Was Painful.

Whatever Extra There Is In Me At Any Given Moment Isn't Fully Formed. I Am Hardly Aware Of It; It Awaits The Next Book. It Will - With Luck - Come To Me During The Actual Writing, And It Will Take Me By Surprise

The Family Feuds Or The Village Feuds Often Had To Do With An Idea Of Honor. Perhaps It Was A Peasant Idea; Perhaps This Idea Of Honor Is Especially Important To A Society Without Recourse To Law Or Without Confidence In Law.

Men Need History; It Helps Them To Have An Idea Of Who They Are. But History, Like Sanctity, Can Reside In The Heart; It Is Enough That There Is Something There.

I've Been A Free Man.