“the most dreamless and introspective time of day, a sort of midnight of the daytime” — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“The intention (of the puja pandals) is not so much to entertain as to disorient and astonish; to tap into the Bengali’s appetite for… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“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… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share
“the world’s cheapest small car, Tata’s Nano, worth only $1500. This toy-like ill-fated vehicle, whose destiny it was to look as if it had been prematurely brought into the world, more foetus than car, and whose birth was near abortive and then indefinitely delayed, this car, when it finally took to the road, turned out to have an engine that… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share
“He has a traditional shopper's DNA, an eye for freshness and appearance, and a consistent sense of a home to go back to.” — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“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… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“Her hair is troublesome and curly ... It falls in long, black strands, but each strand has a gentle, complicated undulation travelling through it,… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“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,… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share
“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… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share
“Internationalism’ is a way of reading, and not a demography of readership.” — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“At the conclusion of Hollywood disaster movies and epics, time moves backward, piecing together like a jigsaw the elements that had come apart. The Titanic resumes its journey; Russell Crowe is reunited with his murdered wife and son. It's not a happy ending; it's a convention created for the purposes of an impossible sense of uplift at the end of… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share
“Calcutta has still not recovered from history: people mourn the past, and abhor it deeply.” — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
“Frame after aluminium frame had replaced the casements. The gesture by which you push a window open was now unnecessary. ... It was as… — Amit Chaudhuri Copy Share Image
