Rajeev Balasubramanyam > Quotes

“And—I don't know—I guess words can't kill you, but I'm afraid that they can. I'm afraid one day someone will say something that destroys me.”
― Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

“to therapists who made you write letters telling your parents you forgave them even though they’d wasted the most potentially wondrous years of their lives running after you like a pair of underpaid waiters at that same hotel buffet you didn’t even know”
― Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

“In November, Bettina [Moreira] presented him with a framed quotation by the biologist George Wald, who had won the Nobel fifty years ago. It read: What one really needs is not Nobel laureates but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that’s how. Wanting it so bad that one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It’s a consolation prize. What matters is love. ‘What the hell do you want me to do with this?’ said Chandra, who had come to a similar conclusion himself but would sooner be damned than tell Ms. Moreira this.”
― Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

“Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t all a giant con, the gaggle of letters after his name, the dinners with Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, the notes from Gordon Brown and Larry Summers. They were like those fake Oscar statues bought at ‘World’s Greatest Photocopier’ or ‘Best Lightbulb Changer in the Galaxy.’ When he died only his writing would remain, until it was rendered obsolete when oil and coal ran out and the species established its first settlement on Mars.

Professor Chandra was the foremost trade economist in the world, could phone any finance minister in any country at any time and have them take his call. And yet, what if he had only convinced himself that the world envied him? What if, in reality, they felt sorry for him with his swollen ego and his Savile Row suits and his sculpted tri-continental accent?”
― Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

“there for years, weren’t you?’ ‘Two,’ said Steve. ‘Two wonderful years.’ ‘With his first wife,’ said Jean, poker-faced. ‘I wanted to talk to you about it last time, but I didn’t want to sound like a fucking stereotype,’ said Steve, giving Chandra a meaningful look. ‘I went there in ’68 to find myself.’ Chandra remembered seeing hippies in the sixties. His parents had told him never to go near them, that they were all drug addicts, the dregs of the West. It was only when he came to England and actually spoke with them that he overcame his fear and realised they were essentially anthropologists.”
― Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss