Author: Manu Joseph
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They are a fellowship, and they can communicate by just clearing the phlegm in their throats.
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A scooter in Madras is a man’s promise that he will not return home drunk in the evening.
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Eventually, the engines roar and they ride out, one by one, sitting at the very edge of the front seat as if that is the cheaper option.
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A north Indian girl in jeans so tight you can see daylight between her legs.
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No matter what their delusions are, parents do not really know their children.
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The most foolish description of the young is that they are rebellious. The truth is that they are a fellowship of cowards.
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On a street where every boy knows that his future rests on a single test with multiple-choice questions, it is appropriate that the four identical buildings here are named A, B, C and
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On a street where every boy knows that his future rests on a single test with multiple-choice questions, it is appropriate that the four identical buildings here are named A, B, C and D.
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That any two men in the world have real affection between them is itself a myth, chiefly of the two men.
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He will squeeze himself safely between the men, feel his wallet at all times, and take great care to ensure that he does not brush against the women
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When he was young, everybody said that was his destiny. But then the years passed and somehow he did not write his great novel.
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‘Strong people write bad stories.’
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How unfortunate it is for Unni that he does not live in the extravagant memory of an infatuated young woman.
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He said every delusion has an objective, and the objective of a delusion is not merely to colonize one brain but to transmit itself to as many brains as possible. That is the purpose of every delusion, that is how a delusion survives, that is how it succeeds. By spreading, maximizing its colony, like a virus.
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The silence was so deep that he could hear the hum of the tube lights.
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In this world, it is very hard to escape happiness. That’s how
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In this world, it is very hard to escape happiness. That’s how it is.’
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A good father and a good husband, which were terms used very often in her house, as a rebuke, a longing or satire, depending on who was talking.
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There is probably no Tamil word for it yet. They say it in English – Heart Attack. Some who are prone to eloquence call it ‘cardiac arrest’.
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He stares at the open textbook for hours and is distracted by the pain of the parallelogram, which is slanted for ever.
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It affects him, the great arrogance of the Equilateral Triangle, the failed aspiration of the octagon to be a circle, the eternal suffocation of the denominator that has to bear the weight of the unjust numerator, the loneliness of Pluto.
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Science is hard because it cannot be fully understood, it can only be accepted, like catechism.
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making each eye bulge and underlining it with a fat pencil as if to say, ‘This is my eye, here is my eye.’
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‘You can wake up a man who is asleep, but not the one who is pretending to be asleep’.
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within his means, not because he drinks. People who do not drink do not understand drunkards. He does not have to buy his drinks, he has many friends who want to buy him liquor. That is the quality of drunkards, they have a lot of friends.
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People who do not drink do not understand drunkards. He does not have to buy his drinks, he has many friends who want to buy him liquor. That is the quality of drunkards, they have a lot of friends.
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One day he told me that the most powerful booze in the world is found in Kerala. He said it is called Jesus Christ.’ ‘It’s true,’ Ousep says. ‘Why is it called Jesus Christ?’ ‘If you drink it you will rise only on the third day.’
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‘Why do you smoke two cigarettes at once?’ he asks with exaggerated respect in his tone. ‘Because three is too much,’ Ousep says.
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The happiest men in the world are the men who swore that they would never become their fathers.
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Millions of years later, new humans might rise and they might build a new world that would look very different from everything Thoma knows. But the pass mark in science and maths would still be thirty-five per cent.
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‘Mary can’t save you. Just because men like virgins, it does not make them gods.’
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Both of them stand on either side of the shut bathroom door and cry as silently as they can.
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He is even happy, and somewhat ashamed of his ordinary everyday happiness, as if fathers of dead sons do not have that crass right.
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And there, in the conference room of his office, he will tell his small team, with his hands stretched wide in a managerial way, ‘We must think out of the box.’
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There are people in this world who set out to make an omelette but end up with scrambled eggs. I am just one of them.’
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their hearts. The eight boys on the wall today are
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It is the misanthrope alone who has clarity.
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As you will discover in time, Balki, the primary choice every man has to make is whether he
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The fundamental quality of a delusion is that it is contagious.
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It occurred to Ousep that morality was probably the invention of unattractive men. Whom else does it benefit really?
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He was a dull student, and his father believed that a thrashing with a leather belt every now and then would solve the problem.
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Adolescence is a very dangerous period in the lives of philosophically oriented males.
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‘I will call you Ousep,’ the boy says. ‘That’s a remarkable coincidence. My name is, in fact, Ousep.’