Book Excerpts

Be optimistic, exhibit patience, shut your mouth, and execute.

It was the day of Diwali, around three in the afternoon. I was in the toilet, the common toilet between my parents’ bedroom – only in name, because they haven’t slept together for fifteen years – and the room that houses my ailing grandfather. I was masturbating thinking of Marie-Anne,

A wedding (vivah) in Hinduism is a rite of passage (samskara) that transforms a single entity into one half of a conjugal pair (dampatya). Being single, however, does not mean being incomplete. The idea of ‘wholeness’ in Hinduism is not necessarily a matter of the union of two bodies in marriage or even two souls in love; rather, wholeness or completeness in Hinduism can be understood as rising to the fullness of one’s true self and expanding the arena of one’s selfhood (brah – to expand, manas – the mind).

In your own town or village, everyone already knows your caste; there is no escaping it. But how do people know your caste when you go elsewhere, to a place where no one knows you? There they will ask you, “What caste are you?” You cannot avoid this question. And you cannot refuse to answer. By tradition, everyone has the right to know. If you are educated like me, if you don’t seem like a typical untouchable, then you have a choice. You can tell the truth and be ostracized, ridiculed, harassed—even driven to suicide, as happens regularly in universities.

As a musician, Zakir Hussain was considered a child prodigy; today he is considered a genius. Despite the international reputation and huge following that he now has, he wears his fame lightly. He remains a man of tehzeeb and humility.