102 Quotes by Karan Mahajan

It didn’t stop – the confusion, the disintegration. Deepa, characterized by her bright, chirpy alertness, was now inert. When they’d come back from meeting Malik Aziz, Vikas had feared she might kill herself, and for a few days he’d stayed home, keeping her under intense watch, with Rajat and his friends making repeated visits. But he saw now what had happened to her was far worse, the mind vacating itself before the body could even act.

But there was no sign of the bomb in the market. Like all other tragedies, it had been covered up; the market had gone into a huddle of concrete and commerce around the blast, paving over the scars like a jungle coming back over a burnt field.

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won’t violate one another’s privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other’s backgrounds... In the East, I’ve heard it said, there’s intimacy without friendship; in the West, there’s friendship without intimacy.

There are no higher values, people in the West say. Live by your own instincts, for yourself, for your own pleasure... In America, you see, you’re not supposed to take care of the elderly. You’re supposed to look after yourself, chase your dreams. But what happens when you grow old? Will your individualism save you?

When a certain swathe of India's population considers the country's ancient past, it doesn't see a country fragmented into kingdoms, savaged by caste divisions, and mired in poverty; rather, what's envisioned is a vast, unified Hindu empire stretching from Kashmir to the Indian tip at Kanyakumari.

I think people have turned terrorists into these larger-than-life devils and so are unable to write about them in the obvious way, which is as human, petty, bumbling.

I remember returning to Bangalore after a few months of travel and seeing it as a first-world city, like New York or San Francisco. This may be obvious to some people, but I grew up in Delhi, and I had no experience of how someone from a 'Tier 2' city may view a 'Tier 1' city. You really do emigrate between worlds when you come from those towns.

Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.

If India hadn't become a troubled space for me, somehow I wouldn't have any reason to write about it. So the fact that it's a lost love, or something, is why I keep thinking about it obsessively.