26 quotes found
“[T]here's a thin line separating the delicate from the bloodless, in art as in food.”
“Calcutta has still not recovered from history: people mourn the past, and abhor it deeply.”
“[G]ive nothing centrality, because writing is about continually shifting weight from one thing and moment to the other.”
“He has a traditional shopper's DNA, an eye for freshness and appearance, and a consistent sense of a home to go back to.”
“This is a little parable about cities and genres; how, while some of them lose their imaginative centrality, others take their place.”
“Water begins to boil in the kettle; it starts as a private, secluded sound, pure as rain, and grows to a steady, solipsistic bubbling.”
“Her hair is troublesome and curly ... It falls in long, black strands, but each strand has a gentle, complicated undulation travelling through it, like a mild electric shock or a thrill, hat gives ...”
“The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven oclock at night. It was a new kind of music called rap. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to l...”
“Class was what formed you, but didnt travel to other cultures it became invisible abroad. In foreign places, you were singled out by religion and race, but not class, which was more indecipherable...”
“All foreign food is doomed to be consumed in India not so much by Indians as by a voracious Indian sensibility, which demands infinite versions of Indian food, and is unmoved by difference.”
“The armchairs, with their flat, sedentary cushions, were designed for society, but the bed was made for solitude. It had a straitened and measured narrowness, an austere frame made to contain the c...”
“When afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road, wet clothes ... hung from a clothesline which stretched from one side to another on the veranda of the first floor. The line, which had not been tightly draw...”
“On the big bed, Mamima and Sandeeps mother began to dream, sprawled in vivid crab-like postures. His aunt lay on her stomach, her arms bent as if she were swimming to the edge of a lake; his mother...”
“So they went out for a walk. They went through narrow, lightless lanes, where houses that were silent but gave out smells of fish and boiled rice stood on either side of the road. There was not a s...”
“The Roman Catholic portrait at the reception of the Indian YMCA displayed the generic Christ, the timorous, blonde-haired, blue-eyed face upturned to the heavens, a lost middle-class student search...”
“While reading the Times of India each morning, my father spares a minute for the cartoon by R. K. Laxman. While my mother is, like a magician, making untidy sheets disappear in the bedroom and prod...”
“At the base of her ankle is a deep, ugly scar she got when a car ran over her foot when she was six years old. That was in a small town in Bangladesh. Thus, even today, she hesitates superstitiousl...”
“Years ago, my mother and I fell in love with Busybees voice, its calm, even tone, and a smile which was always audible in the language. My father, meanwhile, is clipping his nails fastidiously, let...”
“There must be other leaps in life - as momentous as the "mirror stage" - that Lacan didn't mention. Some are universal; others, culturally particular. To understand that your parents are human (and...”
“The gutters in the lane overflowed with an odd, languid grace. Water filled the lane; rose from ankle-deep to knee-deep. Insects swam in circles. Urchins splashed about haphazardly, while Saraswati...”
“Tinkling sounds came from outside, of hammering and chiselling, as labourers worked like bees, and seven- or eight-storeyed buildings rose in the place of ancestral mansions that had been razed cru...”
