Best 12 quotes of Suketu Mehta on MyQuotes

A city like Bombay, like New York, that is a recent creation on the planet and does not have a substantial indigenous population, is full of restless people. Those who have come here have not been at ease somewhere else. And unlike others who may have been equally uncomfortable wherever they came from, these people got up and moved. As I have discovered, having once moved, it is difficult to stop moving.

And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or New York or Jogeshwari; whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold, and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust.

Bombay as a confident, welcoming city that takes in a million new people a year, that those who want to harm the country pick Bombay. Other Indian cities, such as Delhi and Varanasi, have also been bombed recently, but Bombay's significance as the financial capital of the country means that it's the best target for terrorists who're unhappy with India's progress.

Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.

I am an exile; citizen of the country of longing.

If you are late for work in Mumbai and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, don't despair. You can run up to the packed compartments and find many hands unfolding like petals to pull you on board. And while you will probably have to hang on to the door frame with your fingertips, you are still grateful for the empathy of your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle, their shirts drenched with sweat in the badly ventilated compartment. They know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train.

Indian Muslims have stayed very far away from Al Qaeda and the like; they have voted with their feet and stayed in the country, rather than going to Pakistan during partition. On the whole, they recognize that life is better for them in India than in Pakistan.

It was when I realised I had a new nationality: I was in exile. I am an adulterous resident: when I am in one city, I am dreaming of the other. I am an exile; citizen of the country of longing.

The great thing about Bombay is its open, generous heart. I hope - I know - that this spirit will endure. Bombay will adjust.

The trains are central to Bombay just as the subway is central to New York; they are the great social laboratory of that city. And today, they became a charnel-house.

While I was writing my book, I got a top police official in Bombay an invitation to study terrorism at the Rand Institute in Washington DC. This would have helped the city enormously, as he was the detective who cracked the '93 blasts case. But the commissioner declined to let his subordinate take up the offer from Rand, because of his fear that it was CIA-affiliated. That culture of suspicion needs to change; India needs to learn how other democracies fight terror.

I asked Raghav, as we were looking over the wasteland, if the Muslims they burnt would beg for their lives. "Yes they would say, Have mercy on us. But we were filled with such hate; we had Radhabi Chawl on our minds. And even if there was one who said, Let him go, there would be ten others saying, No kill him. And so we had to kill him. "But what if he was innocent?" Raghav looked at me. "His biggest crime was that he was Muslim.