[on Her Writing Agenda:] Make The Familiar

Bengalis Love To Celebrate Their Language, Their Culture, Their Politics, Their Fierce Attachment To A City That Has Been Famously Dying For More Than A Century. They Resent With Equal Ferocity The Reflex Stereotyping That Labels Any Civic Dysfunction Anywhere In The World 'another Calcutta.'

There Was No Audience For My Books. The Indians Didn't Regard Me As An Indian And North Americans Couldn't Conceive Of Me Of A North American Writer, Not Being White And Brought Up On Wheat Germ. My Fiction Got Lost.

What Was The Duty Of The Teacher If Not To Inspire?

Ancestral Habits Of Mind Can Be Constricting; They Also Confer One's Individuality.

I'm Very Moved By Chaos Theory, And That Sense Of Energy. That Quantum Physics. We Don't Really, In Hindu Tradition, Have A Father Figure Of A God. It's About Cosmic Energy, A Little Spark Of Which Is Inside Every Individual As The Soul.