Tarun Tejpal Quotes

“There was too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance - but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we'd die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I'd mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow.”
― Tarun J. Tejpal, The Story of My Assassins

“Power is the engine of the world,and sex and money its oil and lubricants.God is at best the invocation before you start the engine-meaningless if you have no engine to start!God is a goli,a multi-flavoured pill,invented by those who have power,money and sex, to give to those who have none! Love is another great goli.Some days we too swallow these golis.They feel good,like a joint,a temporary high!But they are not the reality.The reality is power,money,sex! And yes,there's another goli-morality!”
― Tarun Tejpal, Histoire de mes assassins

“I was determined that The God of Small Things should be pub-lished in India frst. But within those few months, Pankaj Mishra had given up his job at HarperCollins and more or less moved to London. Most publishing houses in India at that time produced badly designed, shoddy books. Terrible covers, terrible paper, terrible copy- editing. I found it painful, disrespectful. Friends of mine, Tarun Tejpal and Sanjeev Saith, got together and started a publishing company called India Ink. I was at the printing press the day the frst copies rolled out. I could hardly breathe. To see copies of your frst book, piled up in towers –  it ’s an experience that ’s hard to match.
Readings were planned in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Kottayam. Stuart Proftt, my publisher from the UK, and David Godwin few in to be a part of the excitement. There were all kinds of reviews. People hated it, loved it, mocked it,”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me