Greenwich Village always had its share of mind readers, but there are many more these days, and they seem to have moved closer to the mainstream of life in the city. What was crazy 10 years ago is now respectable, even among the best-educated New Yorkers.

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

If only a man could spit his past out so easily.

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.

I am not an original thinker-but I am an original listener.)

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

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.