How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air. [...] It's the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilisations in resurrection and decay. It's the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island City, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. (1.1.4)
"Visions" of India don't just have to use our sight. In fact, we can use our other senses, like the olfactory, to construct smellovision images of the place. Lin's scent painting spans both high to low, nasty and delicious.
Quote #2
The choking humidity makes amphibians of us all, in Bombay, breathing water in air; you learn to live with it, and you learn to like it, or you leave. (1.1.5)
The vision of India that Lin provides makes it seem like a different world, as though you must become an entirely different species in order to live there. Humidity is, of course, a part of life in tropical, coastal areas, but the claim that people living in it must be "amphibians" puts a lot of distance between the speaker and what he's describing.
Quote #3
The open windows of our battered bus gave us the aromas of spices, perfumes, diesel smoke, and the manure of oxen, in a steamy but not unpleasant mix, and voices rose up everywhere above ripples of unfamiliar music. Every corner carried gigantic posters, advertising Indian films. (1.1.25)
Lin's ride into the city from the airport is a full-force introduction to India. The bus's windows are down, which gives the passengers direct contact with the city atmosphere (rather than being enclosed in an airplane, for example). This also lets in smell and sound, in contrast to the flat, 2-D vision of India you would get from the movies advertised on the posters.