How we cite our quotes: (Abbreviated Title.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Shukumar hadn't spent as much time in India as Shoba had. His parents, who settled in New Hampshire, used to go back without him. The first time he'd gone as an infant he'd nearly died of amoebic dysentery. His father, a nervous type, was afraid to take him again, in case something were to happen, and left him with his aunt and uncle in Concord. As a teenager he preferred sailing camp or scooping ice cream during the summers to going to Calcutta. It wasn't until after his father died, in his last year of college, that the country began to interest him, and he studied its history from course books as if it were any other subject. He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India. (ATM 44)
Here's something to think about: is it possible that even Shukumar views India as an exotic "other" place?
Quote #2
Now that I had learned Mr. Pirzada was not an Indian, I began to study him with extra care, to try to figure out what made him different. I decided that the pocket watch was one of those things. When I saw it that night, as he wound it and arranged it on the coffee table, an uneasiness possessed me; life, I realized, was being lived in Dacca first. (WMPCTD 28)
Lilia's just reminding us here that, to a child, everyone who's even a little bit different can seem like a foreign "other." Even though Mr. Pirzada is Pakistani only because of a political decision to partition the country, her parents make it clear that he is not Indian or Hindu. Like children often do, she focuses on a small detail that seems to make him different—his pocket watch.
Quote #3
The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors. Mr. Kapasi was accustomed to foreign tourists; he was assigned to them regularly because he could speak English. (IM 2)
Despite looking Indian, Mr. Kapasi refers to the Das family as foreign tourists. Earlier, Mr. Das had made a point of telling him proudly that he and Mrs. Das were born in the U.S. (Interpreter of Maladies 10) Mr. Kapasi sees through their ethnicity to what really makes them foreign—their dress, attitudes, and behavior.