In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.
Chain of envy linked them, showing each what was lacking in life, but offering also the consolation that happiness was present right next door, in the life of a neighbour, an element of the same society.
To sum up – in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up.
My humble prediction: in twenty years’ time, it will be just us yellow men and brown men at the top of the pyramid, and we’ll rule the whole world. And God save everyone else.
I was eager to try coffee. You see, poor people in the north of this country drink tea, and poor people in the south drink coffee. Who decided that things should be like this, I don’t know, but it’s like this. – Balram Halwai.
Now he explained to her the essential fraudulence of all sporting glory. “Average twenty-one-year-old male, given basic training for one month, can run a hundred meters in about fourteen seconds. Okay? Fastest man runs same distance in nine point nine seconds. Not much of a difference. One to one point four is the range. Now, what is the difference between an average man’s intelligence and Einstein’s? Cannot measure it.
These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid, cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they have no say in. – Balram Halwai.
When I was a boy in Laxmangarh, and I used to play with my father’s body, the junction of the neck and the chest, the place where all the tendons and veins stick out in high relief, was my favorite spot. When I touched this spot, the pit of my father’s neck, I controlled him – I could make him stop breathing with the pressure of a finger.
Free people don’t know the value of freedom, that’s the problem.
Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans.
That’s my whole philosophy in a sentence.
Yes, it’s true: a few hundred thousand rupees of someone else’s money, and a lot of hard work, can make magic happen in this country.
There was a good reason for the face masks; they say the air is so bad in Delhi that it takes ten years out of a man’s life.
White men will be finished within my lifetime. There are blacks and reds too, but I have no idea what they’re up to – the radio never talks about them. My humble prediction: in twenty years’ time, it will be just us yellow men and brown men at the top of the pyramid, and we’ll rule the whole world. And God save everyone else.
Here we have one. No wonder we keep getting jams. Nothing is planned. How will we ever catch up with the Chinese?
The only mind in the whole world he could not read was Javed’s: for what we discover, when we think we are discovering someone else’s thoughts, is our own diminished expectations of them. And the one person Manju could not create a diminished version of was this beak-nosed boy.
And then I understood: this was the real god of Benaras – this black mud of the Ganga into which everything died, and decomposed, and was reborn from, and died into again. The same would happen to me when I died and they brought me here. Nothing would get liberated here.
Don’t worry about it, Asif,” I said. The boy looked so devastated. I’ve come to respect Muslims, sir. They’re not the brightest lot, except for those four poet fellows, but they make good drivers, and they’re honest people, by and large, although a few of them seem to get this urge to blow trains up every year. I wasn’t going to fire Asif over this. But I did ask him to find out the address of the boy, the one we had killed.
Oh, she was one of those people.” “Who live under the flyovers and bridges, sir. That’s my guess too.
Good, Country-Mouse. It’s all here. And where is your master? Will you drive him there?” “I am my own master.
Come tutte le migliori store di Bangalore, anche la mia ha inizio molto lontano da Bangalore. Vede, adesso sono nella Luce, ma sono nato e cresciuto nelle Tenebre.