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Indira Gandhi Had Been This Very Powerful, Dominating, Ambiguous Mother Figure. Ambiguous Because She Was Tyrannical, She Had Imposed...she Had Suspended Indian Democracy For A Few Years But She Also Was The Woman Who Had Defeated Pakistan In War At A Time When Most Male Politicians In India Had Secretly Feared Fighting That War, So That Here In India Even Today Indira Gandhi Is Called By Indian Nationalists The Only Man Ever To Have Governed India.

-Aravind Adiga

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Indira Gandhi Had Been

Aravind Adiga

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Indira Gandhi Had Been This Very Powerful, Dominating, Ambiguous Mother Figure. Ambiguous Because She Was Tyrannical, She Had Imposed...she Had Suspended Indian Democracy For A Few Years But She Also Was The Woman Who Had Defeated Pakistan In War At A Time When Most Male Politicians In India Had Secretly Feared Fighting That War, So That Here In India Even Today Indira Gandhi Is Called By Indian Nationalists The Only Man Ever To Have Governed India.

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When I Was Growing Up In The South Indian City Of Madras, There Were Only Two Political Parties That Mattered; One Was Run By A Former Matinee Idol, And The Other Was Run By His Former Screenwriter.

A Rich Man's Body Is Like A Premium Cotton Pillow, White And Soft And Blank. ''ours'' Is Different. My Father's Spine Was A Knotted Rope, The Kind That Women Use In Villages To Pull Water From Wells; The Clavicle Curved Around His Neck In High Relief, Like A Dog's Collar; Cuts And Nicks And Scars, Like Little Whip Marks In His Flesh, Ran Down His Chest And Waist, Reaching Down Below His Hip Bones Into His Buttocks. The Story Of A Poor Man's Life Is Written On His Body, In A Sharp Pen.

The Coop Is Guarded From The Inside.

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.

Because In This World, There Is A Line: On One Side Are The Men Who Cannot Get Things Done, And On The Other Side Are The Men Who Can. And Not One In A Hundred Will Cross That Line. Will You?

Never Before In Human History Have So Few Owed So Much To So Many, Mr. Jiabao. A Handful Of Men In This Country Have Trained The Remaining 99.9 Percent—as Strong, As Talented, As Inteligent In Every Way—to Exist In Perpetual Servitude; A Servitude So Strong That You Can Put The Key Of His Emancipation In A Man's Hands And He Will Throw It Back At You With A Curse.

You Can't Expect A Man In A Dung Heap To Smell Sweet.

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.

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In A Sense, Journalism Can Be Both Helpful And Detrimental To A Writer Of Fiction Because The Kind Of Writing You Need To Do As A Journalist Is So Different. It Has To Be Clear, Unambiguous, Concise, And As A Writer Often You Are Trying To Do Things That Are More Ambiguous. I Find That Writing Fiction Is Often An Antidote To Reading And Writing Too Much Journalism.

Neither You Nor I Speak English, But There Are Some Things That Can Be Said Only In English.

With Their Tinted Windows Up, The Cars Of The Rich Go Like Dark Eggs Down The Roads Of Delhi. Every Now And Then An Egg Will Crack Open A Woman's Hand, Dazzling With Gold Bangles, Stretches Out An Open Window, Flings An Empty Mineral Water Bottle Onto The Road And Then The Window Goes Up, And The Egg Is Resealed.

Indians Mock Their Corrupt Politicians Relentlessly, But They Regard Their Honest Politicians With Silent Suspicion. The First Thing They Do When They Hear Of A Supposedly 'clean' Politician Is To Grin. It Is A Cliche That Honest Politicians In India Tend To Have Dishonest Sons, Who Collect Money From People Seeking An Audience With Dad.

Indira Gandhi Had Been This Very Powerful, Dominating, Ambiguous Mother Figure. Ambiguous Because She Was Tyrannical, She Had Imposed...she Had Suspended Indian Democracy For A Few Years But She Also Was The Woman Who Had Defeated Pakistan In War At A Time When Most Male Politicians In India Had Secretly Feared Fighting That War, So That Here In India Even Today Indira Gandhi Is Called By Indian Nationalists The Only Man Ever To Have Governed India.

Let Animals Live Like Animals; Let Humans Live Like Humans. That's My Whole Philosophy In A Sentence.

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I Was Looking For The Key For Years But The Door Was Always Open

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.

...the Future Of The World Lies With The Yellow Man And The Brown Man Now That Our Erstwhile Master, The White-skinned Man, Has Wasted Himself Through Buggery, Cell Phone Usage, And Drug Abuse

Neither. I Am Just One Who Has Woken Up While The Rest Of You Are Still Sleeping.

I Gather You Yellow-skinned Men, Despite Your Triumphs In Sewage, Drinking Water, And Olympic Gold Medals, Still Don't Have Democracy. Some Politician On The Radio Was Saying That That's Why We Indian Are Going To Beat You: We May Not Have Sewage, Drinking Water, And Olympic Gold Medals, But We Do Have Democracy. If I Were Making A Country, I'd Get The Sewage Pipes First, Then The Democracy, Then I'd Go About Giving Pamphlets And Statues Of Gandhi To Other People, But What Do I Know? I Am Just A Murderer!

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But Isn't It Likely That Everyone In This World...has Killed Someone Or Other On Their Way To The Top?...all I Wanted Was A Chance To Be A Man--and For That, One Murder Is Enough.

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.

Genuine Concern

The Moment You Recognize What Is Beautiful In This World, You Stop Being A Slave

Lessons To Be Learned

Like Most Of My Friends In School, I Was A Member Of Multiple Circulating Libraries; And All Of Us, To Begin With, Borrowed And Read The Same Things.

I Am Coming Back To New York After Five Years, And It Seems That Psychics Are Taking Over The City.

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If Only A Man Could Spit His Past Out So Easily.

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The Story Of A Poor Man's Life Is Written On His Body, In A Sharp Pen.

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Faithful Servants

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.

Like Most People Who Live In India, I Complain About Corruption, But Know That I Can Live With Corrupt Men. It Is The Honest Ones I Secretly Worry About.

Every Book Is A Kind Of Struggle, And It's A Miracle When It Comes Out.

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I’ve Lived In Several Countries And Been A Disaster Everywhere.

Do We Loathe Our Masters Behind A Facade Of Love - Or Do We Love Them Behind A Facade Of Loathing?

Genuine Concern

A Man's Past Keeps Growing, Even When His Future Has Come To A Full Stop.

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Socialist Countries

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A White Tiger Keeps No Friends. It's Too Dangerous.

When I Was Writing 'the White Tiger' I Lived In A Building Pretty Much Exactly Like The One I Described In This Novel, And The People In The Book Are The People I Lived With Back Then. So I Didn't Have To Do Much Research To Find Them.

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Trustworthiness

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Inconvenience In Progress, Work Is Regretted.

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We Are Made Mysteries To Ourselves By The Rooster Coop We Are Locked In.

Genuine Concern

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Nothing Can Stop A Living Thing That Wants To Be Free

I Am Not An Original Thinker-but I Am An Original Listener.)

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