The Naxalite revolution - an ultra-left Maoist movement - in Bengal, and elsewhere in India, in the late 1960s provides one strand of 'The Lives of Others.' Neel Mukherjee More Quotes by Neel Mukherjee More Quotes From Neel Mukherjee To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book. Neel Mukherjee day good you book The freedom fighters in India's long struggle for independence from British rule, or members of the African National Congress, were once classed as terrorists. History, as they say, is written by victors, but history also has many cunning corridors - how much time must elapse before all those tricky side-passages are revealed? Neel Mukherjee freedom struggle time history To be an Indian writer is to write, necessarily and inevitably, about politics, so it was a given that the story of the Ghoshes, the family at the centre of 'The Lives of Others,' should have a political soul. Neel Mukherjee family politics political soul Work defines our lives and our place in the world. Neel Mukherjee our place work world I don't read my books, so I don't allow myself the dangerous luxury of toying with the idea of doing things differently. Neel Mukherjee doing myself luxury dangerous I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer. Neel Mukherjee call just myself book One writes what one can, or has to, write. Neel Mukherjee writes write Remember that what seems zeitgeisty today is the cause of tomorrow's bafflement or, worse, ridicule. Neel Mukherjee worse tomorrow remember today I grew up in financially straitened circumstances and meat, which was expensive, was a rare thing at mealtimes. We ate meat about once a month, if that. Neel Mukherjee rare meat expensive circumstances India introduced Britain to vegetarianism - see Tristram Stuart's excellent first book on this - and it is possible, indeed all too easy, to be a vegetarian in India and eat extraordinarily good, varied food every day, with very few 'repeats.' Neel Mukherjee day good food book Meat-fetishiser that I was, I used to find willed vegetarianism inexplicable. It was one thing to be a vegetarian because of religious and caste reasons - something I was familiar with because of my Indian upbringing - but to choose to be a vegetarian when you could eat meat for every meal every day? That seemed madness to me. Neel Mukherjee every-day day me you In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu. In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help. Neel Mukherjee restaurant eyes dinner failure The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right? Neel Mukherjee better money white numbers Nostalgia is a particular affliction of immigrant fiction, and it's led to a kind of sclerosis of the form. I hate nostalgia, and I feel it's good to be aware of the politics of these genres. Neel Mukherjee feel good politics hate Given that all our lives rest on work that defines us, the business of labor, the wealth that work manifests itself to, I find it odd that not much is written about it. We talk about relationships, damage, adultery, revolution, but we don't talk about work. Neel Mukherjee rest revolution business work When a book is going well, it tells you where to go. Neel Mukherjee well go you book I had just begun an M.A. in Creative Writing, and I had to write a novel, so I began writing a novel that later became 'A Life Apart.' Neel Mukherjee just creative writing life Innocence is a pretty dangerous thing, you know. Revisit Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' or, for that matter, Greene's 'The Quiet American' to find out how destructive it can be. Neel Mukherjee know you dangerous matter Nostalgia can be extremely powerful in the right hands: think of the intense longing in the films Andrei Tarkovsky made after he left the U.S.S.R. They wring your soul. Neel Mukherjee think powerful soul hands I'm much more attracted to the miscegenation of cultures than to harmony. Neel Mukherjee cultures than more harmony
