41 Quotes by Amit Chaudhuri

Photographers are the new Brahmins: we have no volition when they rule us.

I ... take a selfie with him; two, to be safe. My lips are parted, as if I'm poking a dead thing to see if it'll come to life; it's the phone I'm attempting to keep at a distance. He's smiling faintly, as if amuse by some exotic piece of wildlife.

... "shagging" - a quasi-comical activity, like belching or farting, except it was more taboo and more necessary than these.

Only drunks stare at statues .... I never liked the statues keeping vigil, primarily because they were too close to life.

the world’s cheapest small car, Tata’s Nano, worth only $1500. This toy-like ill-fated vehicle, whose destiny it was to look as if it had been prematurely brought into the world, more foetus than car, and whose birth was near abortive and then indefinitely delayed, this car, when it finally took to the road, turned out to have an engine that at times exploded mysteriously. Until 2009, it was seen to be Bengal’s quirky but irreplaceable mascot for development.

Calcutta has still not recovered from history: people mourn the past, and abhor it deeply.

The intention (of the puja pandals) is not so much to entertain as to disorient and astonish; to tap into the Bengali’s appetite for the bizarre, the uncanny.

The Bengali was the Marwari of the early nineteenth century.

The myth of the Pujas is a simple one – full of rural sweetness. ... The Pujas are, in part, an ever-returning homage to that magical sense of being rescued, so indispensable to children.