“The kitchen was the bivouac of an insurgent army. Every surface had been colonised by objects that had nothing to do with cooking: a rotating globe, illustrations ripped from anatomy textbooks, toy Ambassador taxis from India, an obsolete desktop computer,… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
Come on, a 25-page digression on god? You can’t have that kind of thing, cut it out!” — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
“You die. You get old and die. Your anger curdles, your grief dries, your talent fades on the page. Your cells metastasise into an army dedicated to the overthrow of you. You become dependent on paid strangers for the maintenance of your blood and your brittle bones. You understand that thought is the enemy, the source of all lesions, tumours,… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share
Then there are the addicts, the hunger addicts, the rage addicts, the poverty addicts , and power addicts, and the pure addicts who are addicted not to substances but to the oblivion and the tenderness the substances engender. An addict, if you don't mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share
“Those who say time heals and death resolves are speaking falsely or thoughtlessly or without the experience of loss.” — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
“He read because it gave him instant gratification in a way nothing else did,and as was the case with all addicts,gratification was the important… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
“To want is to wait, as I do in the place I know, my breathing loud and single as the room, its smell of… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
Because now there's time enough not to hurry, to light the lamp and open the window to the moon and take a moment to… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
“There’s been some discussion as to why God created the world. Let me clear it up. He made the world because that’s what he does. He makes things. A more pertinent question, though pertinence is hardly the point at this point: why did he make humans? Now there’s a question. He made us as a bulwark against loneliness and boredom.… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share
“In the sky was a sliver of moon. What kind of moon? A moon like a clipped fingernail, like a smudge of powdered sugar, like a yellow laddoo, like a shattered dinner plate, like the tusk of a wounded mammoth, like a scimitar buried in the enemy’s skull, like a horned demon drowned in blood, like a fallen warrior’s silver… — Jeet Thayil Copy Share
I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay. — Jeet Thayil Copy Share Image
