Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—"we" entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.

Go to the tea shop anywhere along the Ganga, sir, and look at the men working in that tea shop - men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans in crushed uniforms, sluggish, unshaven, in their thirties or forties or fifties but still "boys." But that is your fate if you do your job well - with honesty, dedication, and sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it, no doubt.

Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.

I am coming back to New York after five years, and it seems that psychics are taking over the city.

I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.

I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this - but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are. "Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing? "We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

What keeps India safe really is the heroism of millions of poor Indians who every day reject the allure of terrorism. What keeps India safe is just the courage of poor Indians, not the actions of its government.