The Toughest Indian in the World
Quotes from the Book
The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now.
Scientists want to search for alien signals because that's what gets them publicity. They are like Jesus Christ." "Jesus Christ?" Nambodri asked, with a faintly derogatory chuckle. "Yes. They are exactly like Jesus Christ. You know that he turned water into wine." "I've heard that story." "From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone's house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do.
The end of an ox is beef, the end of a lie is grief.
Marriage needed the absurdity of values.
The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how “standards are falling”. So
A man cannot be exactly the way he wants to be and also dream of keeping his wife
Yes, Yes. Indians were the oldest civilization on Earth, the greatest, the best. And only Indians had culture. Others were all dumb nomads and whores.
The dedication of passwords was the new fellowship of marriage. To each other, couples had become furtive asterisks
After riding like a moron all over the place, observe the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned.
Free love,Ayaan knew, is an enchanting place haunted by demented women
From what Ayyan had heard of the battles of the Brahmins, it would be bloodless but brutal. They would fight like demons armed with nothing more than deceit and ideals - another form of deceit among men from good families.
And one day, very soon in fact, Adi would be an adolescent. An adolescent son of a clerk. A miserable thing to be in this country. He would have to forget all his dreams and tell himself that what he wanted to do was engineering. It's the only hope, everyone would tell him. Engineering, Adi would realize, is every mother's advice to her son, a father's irrevocable decision, a boy's first foreboding of life.
He was wearing a blue tracksuit that had a white tick mark embroidered at the hip, as if he approved of something.
You can tell me. A man can tell a naked woman anything.
That men, in reality, did not have friends in other men. That the fellowship of men, despite its joyous banter, old memories of exaggerated mischief and the altruism of sharing pornography, was actually a farcical fellowship. Because what a man really wanted was to be bigger than his friends.
Operna did not understand this habit of Indian men. If they could letch at her so overtly, they might as well ask her directly who she was. Why did they always turn to someone else and say, 'Wont you introduce us?' It was so pathetic.
After riding like a moron all over the place, observes the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned.
Most of you will probably never really discover anything. You may not contribute anything to the great equations that describe the universe to the world. But you will have the good fortune of encountering people of exceptional intelligence. People who are much smarter than you. Never get in their way, never group together in disgruntled circles and play games. Respect talent, real talent. Worship it. Clever people will always be disliked. Don’t exploit that to crawl your way to the top. By the laws of probability most of you are mediocre. Accept it. The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how “standards are falling”. So don’t mull. Just know when you’ve to get out of the way. Most of you will be sideshows, extras in the grand unfolding of truth. That’s all right. Once you accept that and let the best brains do their jobs, you will have done your service to science and mankind.
A man on a bike was riding on the pavement. When he tried to plunge into the road, a car hit him. He fell down but managed to get up. He looked shocked. That, Ayyan loved. After riding like a moron all over the place, observe the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned.
It’s a myth that Sanskrit is the best language for writing computer code. Patriotic Indians have spread this lie for many years—Bill Gates
A mysterious character of UFOs is that they are sighted only in the First World,' she said, 'and no alien conquest of Earth begins until the mayor of New York holds an emergency press conference. When Mars attacks, it attacks America.
it is in the nature of love to be disproportionate with both rewards and retributions.
That perilous distance from where the face of any woman would look ugly.
She made him sad, but he also longed for this sorrow to arrive in his room as often as possible in that ascetic uniform of long top and jeans, the cassock of her platonic detachment.
She walked to the door and looked at him with an affection that was at once hopeful and melancholic. Like light was both particle and wave.
she would smile when she learnt that the ladies’ rest-room on the third floor was called Ladies and the men’s was called Scientists. She would endure the men who inescapably fell towards her in the corridors and gave her guidance she never sought. She would try to pass through the long corridors of this place like a shadow, and she would fail every day.
he tried to look at her face in the hope that she was not pretty. Beautiful women depressed him. They were like Mercedes, BlackBerry phones and sea-view homes.
The unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force has created languages to limit human thought. That writers are overrated fools. That all religions come from ancient comic writers. And the ultimate goal of comics is same as the purpose of humanity – to break free from language.
In the twilight that was now the colour of dust, in the fury of horns that was a national language because honking had telegraphic properties..
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About Manu Joseph
About the book
A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai’s humid tenements.
Ayyan Mani, one of the thousands of dalit (untouchable caste) men trapped in Mumbai’s slums, works in the Institute of Theory and Research as the lowly assistant to the director, a brilliant self-assured astronomer. Ever wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots, one involving his knowledge of an illicit romance between his married boss and the institute’s first female researcher, and another concerning his young son and his soap-opera-addicted wife. Ayyan quickly finds his deceptions growing intertwined, even as the Brahmin scientists wage war over the question of aliens in outer space. In his debut novel, Manu Joseph expertly picks apart the dynamics of this complex world, offering humorous takes on proselytizing nuns and chronicling the vanquished director servin
Book details
- First published
- 2010
- Author
- Manu Joseph
- Genre
- Fiction
- Goodreads rating
- 3.77 (4k ratings)
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