These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid, cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they have no say in ... Would they do it this time? Would they beat the Great Socialist and win the elections? Had they raised enough money of their own, and bribed enough policemen, and bought enough fingerprints of their own, to win? Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh.

...the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse

Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.

India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.