The Inscrutable Americans Quotes

“Are red haired girls, red all over?”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“His entire life in India had become irrelevant and meant nothing. Not his own achievements, not his family's affluence, everything was beyond the curtain of mirrors with which America bounded itself. Nothing beyond mattered. Here he had to recreate himself, but the basic building block of his new persona was his colour.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“Never take no shit from nobody. They give you shit, you give back two buckets of shit. You know what I mean?”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“all cultures developed a variety of names to distinguish the shadings of any element of which there was an abundance in the environment.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“He saw a beach with the night resting on it and a lake like liquid dark spilled beyond.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“Here he sensed there was nothing in the landscape but itself. He was delighted at this liberation from history. The trees, the meadows, the houses were just themselves; attractive, healthy, often beautiful, civil in their lack of extremes, open in what they had to offer. There were no poisonous snakes crawling here. How curiously like Americans themselves, he thought. Obviously the characteristics of the land seemed to have entered into the people too. Perhaps, he thought with a start, that was true of India as well. The extremes of kindness and cruelty, the brooding patience, and always, behind the smile, a slithering something.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“In India you clawed your way through the day, through dirt and glamour and people who seemed to strip the skin off your bones when they dealt with you, leaving every nerve raw. Here it was all so much more courteous even at its worst, hushed, gentler. They spoke to you with a respect that wrapped you in cotton wool. You didn't feel that every man coveted your property or your self-respect or was otherwise desperately straining to find ways to humble you.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“And yet here there was tranquility, efficiency, a certain new-world courtesy and civility all their own. There were amazing facilities to study, unimaginable in India. The business of living was made easy, so you could get on with doing more than surviving.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“Could he leave all that? Could he ever really leave India? Would he ever be anything but an alien in any other country? With his head here, his heart in India and his skin set on fire by the gaze of strangers, could he ever leave forever the smell of woodsmoke and jasmine on a winter's night? The stars, often so many of them that there seemed a rainfall of light. And the night itself spread like a dark blue wanton. Dawn and the sun rising like an explosion of softness. A hundred ruins weeping silently amidst the thunder and dust of everyday life. The sheer bliss of being home, of walking the streets amidst littered scraps of humanity, amidst cows and garbage, yet totally content at being home, being where you belonged, where no man looked at you twice on the streets in question.”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“Perhaps he would relive it all only when he sent his son here to study, to learn in their superb systems, to grow and be hurt and yet feel so alive in their strange world, amidst their alien and rude ways that somehow managed to be affectionate. But it would be long time from now,”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“And why do I hang my head in shame? Is it because I have done some wrong? Yes, my brothers, because I have sinned. Because we have all sinned. Because seeing Satan and his works around us, yet we do nothing. Therefore we have sinned. Oh there is none so blind as those who will not see.' 'Hallelujah!”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans

“My grand-daddy died fightin for it, my Dad was wounded in the war, my brother served in Korea and I did my duty in Nam. We've paid our dues and we done all we could for this country, but we didn't do it to turn America into no nigger heaven, pardon my saying so. And we'll do it again if we have to against those Commie rats and anybody else that don't like the way things are. That's the American way.' 'Amen,”
― Anurag Mathur, The Inscrutable Americans