Capitalism might everywhere be spreading havoc, but it is also triumphant everywhere. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
In ‘Bombay-London-New York,’ I speak of the ways in which the ‘soft’ emotion of nostalgia is turned into the ‘hard’ emotion of fundamentalism. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
Ideally, I’d like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
For me to say that all novels in English written by Indians are all alike would be a bit like saying that all the cows in India look the same and have identical horns. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
To my mind, a journalist needs to espouse objectivity and distance, while a writer practises an art that is more free. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
While I ridicule books of self-help, I’m also quite susceptible to them. They help simplify things. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
When we were getting married the Hindu way in Arrah, we had an old guest who asked my wife what her ‘good name’ was. I think she’d heard that I had married a Muslim. When my wife said, ‘Mona Ahmed Ali,’ the lady looked at me and exclaimed, ‘Oh, so you’ve married a terrorist.’ Amitava Kumar Read Quote
Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in which misrecognition has haunted all cognition. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
India allows you the luxury of a million inequalities. You can be a schoolboy selling tea to passengers sitting in a state transport bus, but you are royalty when compared to a shirtless, barefoot village boy, from what was traditionally considered an untouchable caste, living on snails and small fish – and sometimes rats. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
