To, The Unconsoled"
-- Author (Epigraph)

Importance: In the epigraph to the novel, the author addresses the "Unconsoled." By not identifying who or what constitutes the "Unconsoled," Roy invites the reader to think about which characters might be considered "unconsoled" as well as what consolation would look like in the India portrayed in the novel.

But for us the price-rise and school-admissions and beating-husbands and cheating-wives are all inside us. The riot is inside us. The war is inside us. Indo-Pak is inside us. It will never settle down. It can't."
-- Nimmo Gorakhpuri (chapter 2)

Importance: Here, the character of Nimmo Gorakhpuri provides an analysis of the hijra condition that links their experience to that of the Indian Subcontinent. Both, Nimmo Gorakhpuri suggests, are divided against themselves.

To be present in history, even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from being written out of it altogether."
-- Narrative (chapter 2)

Importance: The passage suggests that...