New York is a lovely city. It is an easy city to go back to and an easy city to leave. Every time I go there I immediately make travel plans.

I do think that the modern India does belong to writers who are living in India.

Sadness was so claustrophobic.

Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life.

We think of immigration as a Western issue but, of course, it isn't.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway then they vanished again. Addresses, phone numbers did not hold. The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore.