E.T.’s Reviews > Longing, Belonging: An Outsider at Home in Calcutta > Status Update

“The beauty of street food lies in watching it being prepared. The same alu-kabli, were it to be sold readymade, would evoke no special feeling: it would have been just a soggy salad. It is the live demonstration of the hawker's skill that works your salivary glands.”

"You may possess an impressive collection of songs of your idols and have the luxury of listening to them at will—even playing the same song several times in a row, but it is an altogether different sensation when the radio plays a song you love. It is a validation of your craze. You feel victorious."

“CALCUTTA IS LIKE no other city in India. Give a third-world look to London, spray it with the permissive air of Paris, lend it the temperament of Latin America, people it with Bengalis—Calcutta would be that city.”

“Kolkata has comforting similarities with Chennai: simplicity, absence of ostentation, pride in culture, spiritual bent of mind, worship of knowledge. I felt rooted.”