In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
Bharati MukherjeeThere was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.
Bharati MukherjeeWhat was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
Bharati MukherjeeIn other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America.
Bharati MukherjeeThe picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
Bharati Mukherjee