"What struck me about the photos, beside the uncanny resemblance to me, was the fact that Ram Dulari seemed so unselfconscious. There was no artifice, no pretence, no effort to appear like me. She was just made that way. This was a girl unaware of her own beauty and I immediately felt a sense of kinship with her. Here was I, living in a luxurious five-bedroom penthouse apartment in the best city in India, and there was she, a luckless orphan, barely managing to survive in the heartland of Bihar where marauding gangs roamed free and unchecked. I resolved in that moment to help her, to send Bhola the very next morning to Patna to bring Ram Dulari to Mumbai, and to me.
"I don't know what I will do with her. I have enough servants already, even good Brahmin ones. All I know is that I cannot leave this poor girl to her fate. I cannot be a silent spectator to her suffering. So I will intervene in her destiny, alter her fate.
"But in doing so, will I be altering my own?"
"I don't know what I will do with her. I have enough servants already, even good Brahmin ones. All I know is that I cannot leave this poor girl to her fate. I cannot be a silent spectator to her suffering. So I will intervene in her destiny, alter her fate.
"But in doing so, will I be altering my own?"
—Shabnam Saxena
"Like you, I also feel suffocated at times, working in a job where I meet the scum of society day in and day out. But occasionally I do manage to wipe the tears off a widow's face or put a missing child back into his mother's lap. These are the moments I live for."
—Inspector Pandey
"But remember," he raised a finger, "ours is a strange and sublime land. You can meet the best people in the world here and the worst. You can experience unparalleled kindness and witness extraordinary cruelty. To survive here, you must change your way of thinking. Don't trust anyone. Don't count on anyone. Here you are entirely on your own."
—Inspector Pandey
