Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.

With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

...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

Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.

Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free