She would sweep the floor – unending expanses, acres and acres of floor – with a short broom called the jhadu, swiping away the dust in an arc with i… - Amit Chaudhuri

'I think of Ramu. The Ramu I know and the Ramu I'm writing about have become indistinguishable. The same's true of the Bombay I'm recounting from experience and the Bombay I'm assembling through words. This is often how novels begin for me. There's a convergence. I live. Then something prompts me to write. The writing is not about life. It is a form of living. The two happen simultaneously.

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

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