Amit Chaudhuri

“Class was what formed you, but didn’t 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 than any other mother tongue. He’d learnt that not only were light, language, and weather contingent – class was too.”

“The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock 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 listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like.”

“He has a traditional shopper's DNA, an eye for freshness and appearance, and a consistent sense of a home to go back to.”

“[T]here's a thin line separating the delicate from the bloodless, in art as in food.”

“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.”

“Calcutta has still not recovered from history: people mourn the past, and abhor it deeply.”

“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 it a life of its own; it is visually analogous to a tremolo on a musical note.”