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!

Aravind Adiga

Categorized in : Country Men Drinking

It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.

Aravind Adiga

cash money language

A man's past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.

Aravind Adiga

growing men past

Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country.

Aravind Adiga

brother country lying

You can't expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet.

Aravind Adiga

smell sweet men

Greenwich Village always had its share of mind readers, but there are many more these days, and they seem to have moved closer to the mainstream of life in the city. What was crazy 10 years ago is now respectable, even among the best-educated New Yorkers.

Aravind Adiga

crazy cities years

I was looking for the key for years But the door was always open

Aravind Adiga

keys doors life

The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave

Aravind Adiga

lessons-to-be-learned lesson-learned beautiful

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.

Aravind Adiga

dad people son

We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

Aravind Adiga

genuine-concern roosters mystery

The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

Aravind Adiga

body stories men

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.

Aravind Adiga

eggs dark hands

See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.

Aravind Adiga

weight losing dream

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.

Aravind Adiga

genuine-concern self heart

Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.

Aravind Adiga

inconvenience progress

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

Aravind Adiga

differences sleep men

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books

Aravind Adiga

too-much heart book

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.

Aravind Adiga

sentences animal philosophy

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

Aravind Adiga

speak-english speak said

At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society.

Aravind Adiga

india important trying

In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

Aravind Adiga

my-family growing-up class