Top Highlights

• I have come to the conclusion that he who does not encounter the whole universe in the streets of his city will not encounter an original street in any of the cities of the whole world. He won’t encounter them because those who are blind in Buenos Aires are blind in Madrid, or in Calcutta . . . Roberto Arlt, ‘The Pleasure of Vagabonding’
• Of all the people who came to Ellis Island in the first decades of the twentieth century, more than half went back. They never told us that on our seventh-grade class trip. The American immigrant myth says that migration is a reset button. The New World offers deliverance from the past, liberation from the Old World’s limited horizons. The myth sta...
• My parents were Indian scientists, torn between nation and vocation. Twice they moved to America, twice they moved back. They were unwilling to leave their country and they were unable to stay.
• Every immigrant who has lugged worthless foreign degrees through customs knows that where you go to college, the seal on that sheepskin determines your lot in life. When the acceptance letter from Princeton arrived, my parents acted as if someone had come to our door with balloons and a giant cardboard cheque. It was their happiest day in America. ...
• Stop and ask for directions in Delhi and no one knows, because no one is truly of the city. Ask for directions on any Calcutta street corner and a half-dozen mustachioed men will appear out of nowhere, determined to direct you somewhere. They may offer radically divergent views on the matter, a street fight may break out as a result, rival politica...