Amit Chaudhuri Quotes

Internationalism' is a way of reading, and not a demography of readership.

On the big bed, Mamima and Sandeep's 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 lay on her back, her feet (one of which had a scar on it) arranged in the joyous pose of a dancer.

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 drawn anyway, sagged with the pressure of the heavy wet clothes that dripped, from sleeves and trouser-ends, a curious grey water on to the floor, and, especially in the middle, one noticed the line curved downwards, as if a smile were forming.

History was what had happened; class was something you read about in a book.

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 superstitiously before crossing the road, and is painfully shy of walking distances. Her fears make her laughable. The scar is printed on her skin like a radiant star.

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.

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.

Tagore claims that the first time he experienced the thrill of poetry was when he encountered the children's rhyme 'Jal pare/pata nare' ('Rain falls / The leaf trembles) n Iswrchandra Vidyasagar's Bengali primer Barna Parichay (Introducing the Alphabet). There are at least two revealing things about this citation. The first is that, as Bengali scholars have remarked, Tagore's memory, and predilection, lead him to misquote and rewrite the lines. The actual rhyme is in sadhu bhasha, or 'high' Bengali: 'Jal paritechhe / pata naritechhe' ('Rain falleth / the leaf trembleth'). This is precisely the sort of diction that Tagore chose for the English Gitanjali, which, with its these and thous, has so tried our patience. Yet, as a Bengali poet, Tagore's instinct was to simplify, and to draw language closer to speech. The other reason the lines of the rhyme are noteworthy, especially with regard to Tagore, is – despite their deceptively logical progression – their non-consecutive character. 'Rain falls' and 'the leaf trembles' are two independent, stand-alone observations: they don't necessarily have to follow each other. It's a feature of poetry commented upon by William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral: that it's a genre that can get away with seamlessly joining two lines which are linked, otherwise, tenuously.

Only drunks stare at statues .... I never liked the statues keeping vigil, primarily because they were too close to life.

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 searching for guidance in an inhospitable world.

A customs man at JFK had asked them to open the suitcases (in case they were smuggling in Indian fruits or sweets, perhaps). 'Ulysses!' the large bespectacled disbelieving customs man had said. 'Are you a student?' Ananda had nodded, though he was in the equivalent of high school. 'I wouldn't read Ulysses unless I was a student!' said the customs man, shutting the suitcase after his glimpse into the tantalising freemasonry of studenthood. A potentially incendiary book then - on the verge of being, but not quite, contraband. And near-unreadable. Ananda

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.

the most dreamless and introspective time of day, a sort of midnight of the daytime

This is what's beautiful about staying in a club or hotel: you're invisible, as is your neighbour.

This is a little parable about cities and genres; how, while some of them lose their imaginative centrality, others take their place.

The city was still .... Soon the machinery would start working again, not out of any sense of purpose, but like a watch that is wound daily by someone's hand. Almost without any choice in the matter, people would embark upon the minute frustrations and satisfactions of their daily lives. It was in this moment of postponement that the azaan was heard, neither announcing the day nor keeping it a secret.

Calcutta is like a work of modern art that neither makes sense nor has utility, but exists for some esoteric aesthetic reason.

Years ago, my mother and I fell in love with Busybee's voice, its calm, even tone, and a smile which was always audible in the language. My father, meanwhile, is clipping his nails fastidiously, letting them fall on to an old, spread-out copy of the Times of India, till he sneezes explosively, as he customarily does, sending the crescent-shaped nail-clippings flying into the universe.

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

I treat vegetarianism as a phase that might any second end without warning.

I ... take a selfie with him; two, to be safe. My lips are parted, as if I'm poking a dead thing to see if it'll come to life; it's the phone I'm attempting to keep at a distance. He's smiling faintly, as if amuse by some exotic piece of wildlife.