It's a very strange middle class…Full of operators and people on the move. It really doesn't value disruptions in that activeness. It doesn't have ti… - Amit Chaudhuri

Water begins to boil in the kettle; it starts as a private, secluded sound, pure as rain, and grows to a steady, solipsistic bubbling.

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.

... invisibility was one of Bengali modernity's prerequisites and cardinal achievements.