What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
Bharati MukherjeeIn India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
Bharati MukherjeeI feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.
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 MukherjeeBut, Christ, there's a difference between exotic and foreign, isn't there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.
Bharati MukherjeeBengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta.'
Bharati Mukherjee