My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality. Amitava Kumar More Quotes by Amitava Kumar More Quotes From Amitava Kumar Michael Ondaatje’s work taught me how to be at home in fragments, and how to think about a big story in carefully curated vignettes. All his books were odd, all of them ‘unfinished’ the way Chopin’s Études are unfinished: no wasted gestures, no unnecessary notes. Amitava Kumar homebookthinking There is no beginning that is a blank page. Amitava Kumar blank-pagesblankpages The border is a marketplace. The invisible hand of the powerful governs the crossings. Amitava Kumar invisible-handpowerfulhands India allows you the luxury of a million inequalities. You can be a schoolboy selling tea to passengers sitting in a state transport bus, but you are royalty when compared to a shirtless, barefoot village boy, from what was traditionally considered an untouchable caste, living on snails and small fish - and sometimes rats. Amitava Kumar fishyouvillagetea Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes and cinema houses, village squares, and half-forgotten libraries. Amitava Kumar villagecinemaculturehistory I should not romanticize the simplicity of a village. For instance, the place from where I used to buy a packet of glucose biscuits in my village is now selling cellphones. Amitava Kumar placenowvillagesimplicity Each employed immigrant has his or her place of work. It is only the taxi driver, forever moving on wheels, who occupies no fixed space. He represents the immigrant condition. Amitava Kumar placemoving-onspacework Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in which misrecognition has haunted all cognition. Amitava Kumar beenimportantidentitywriting The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely. Amitava Kumar wordswillyoureading Imagination makes us shape better stories, sure, but it also allows us to multiply possibilities. Amitava Kumar possibilitiesusbetterimagination Criticism is, or ought to be, a judicious act. Amitava Kumar judiciousactoughtcriticism For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies of liberation are projected from a comfortable distance. Amitava Kumar someleftdistancepeople Muslim anger has, of course, been stoked by America's war in Iraq and by Israel's brutal policies toward Palestine and Lebanon. Amitava Kumar palestineangerwaramerica Long ago, when I was in higher secondary school in Delhi, I read an essay by George Orwell in which he said there was a voice in his head that put into words everything he was seeing. I realised I did that, too, or maybe I started doing it in imitation. Amitava Kumar wordsvoicelongschool Hemingway's short story 'Hills Like White Elephants' is a classic of its kind. It illustrates Hemingway's 'iceberg theory,' which requires that a story find its effectiveness by hiding more than it reveals. Amitava Kumar shortstoryclassicwhite It is clear from Salman Rushdie's writing that politics and literature cannot be separated. Everything is political. Amitava Kumar politicspoliticalliteraturewriting A long, negative review I wrote of Rushdie's novel 'Fury' earned me a rebuke from the writer: He told an administrator at the college where I teach, and who had invited Rushdie to come speak, that he wouldn't share the stage with me. Amitava Kumar mespeaklongnegative No civilization has a monopoly on tolerance; each is capable of bigotry. Amitava Kumar eachcapabletolerancecivilization In the way in which we are living in a much more explosive and more tension-filled society, a society that is driven with more and more contradictions, it is but unavoidable that some of this will also come into cinema. I would, in fact, argue that a part of it is borrowed from Hollywood. It's as if Quentin Tarantino has come to Mumbai. Amitava Kumar willcinemasocietyway Indian writers in English are rank individualists. Even among the progressives, there is a strain of anti-leftism, or at least a suspicion of any organized politics. Amitava Kumar rankenglishindianpolitics
