Jeet Thayil - Kind Quotes

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Opium use is a quick way of showing a person's character. Within months some people would be stealing from family and friends, but there were people who never did that kind of thing. I used my salary to finance my habit.

Jeet Thayil
I could feel my colour. I could feel racism... in the way people looked at you, and the way they talked to you. Now, though, because of the mixing of cultures, it seems like some kind of brilliant social experiment... In some ways it seems to me the city of the future.

Jeet Thayil
It had people from all over the country and the world. The great thing about Bombay as a city was it was a magnet for anybody with talent, or ambition or hunger, or beauty, or intelligence. If you had any of these things and you wanted to make something of yourself, you went to Bombay and the city would reward you. I think all of that changed in 1992, when the last big riots happened in Bombay between Hindus and Muslims. Now when I go back to the city and I look at it, I can see the kind of profound impact that those riots had, and how it's changed the character of the city, and in such a profound way that I don't think it will ever change back to what it was before '92.

Jeet Thayil
It would be nice if things changed in the sense that they became more cosmopolitan, more inclusive, wider rather than narrower, with a kind of a view towards the future and a view towards many different kinds of people and people from different cultures living together. Because that's what a city really is about... That's the beauty of a great city. And the sad thing is, there was a time when you thought Bombay had it.

Jeet Thayil
Indian reviewers don't read books. They have two days to produce 800 words. They read the prologue and then skim a few pages, then they read all the other reviews. If the first two are negative, you can be sure they will all be negative. If the first two are good, the rest will be good. It's that low-level, that pathetic. It takes a kind of confidence for a reviewer to have their own opinion about a book. And a lot of people here just don't care about literary novels.

Jeet Thayil