Quotes from Amit Chaudhuri

Frame after aluminium frame had replaced the casements. The gesture by which you push a window open was now unnecessary. ... It was as if a part of us that was air and breeze had been denied entry.

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.

Blasphemy is a religious experience.

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

He has a traditional shopper's DNA, an eye for freshness and appearance, and a consistent sense of a home to go back to.

I treat vegetarianism as a phase that might any second end without warning.

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

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

Fantasists aren't natural readers. They grow restive easily.

The armchairs, with their flat, sedentary cushions, were designed for society, but the bed was made for solitude. It had a straitened and measured narrowness, an austere frame made to contain the curves of a single body, to circumscribe it, carry it, give it a place, and when I slept at night, I possessed it entirely.

Anyway, if Calcutta today suffers in comparison, it's not really to other cities, but principally to itself and what it used to be. Anyone who has an idea of what Calcutta once was will find that vanished Calcutta the single most insurmountable obstacle to understanding, or sympathising with, the city today.

History was what had happened; class was something you read about in a book.

Class was what formed you, but didn't travel to other cultures – it became invisible abroad. In foreign places, you were singled out by religion and race, but not class, which was more indecipherable than any other mother tongue. He'd learnt that not only were light, language, and weather contingent – class was too.

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