The reluctant fundamentalist – The janissaries

Janissaries: young Christians captured by the Ottomans to become soldiers of the Muslim army. Once older they were sent to kill their families of origin and to destroy their homes. Once men, they were devoted to their captors, ready to serve their nation.

Changez says he is not devoted to any empire: he says he is not a fundamentalist but he is, at the same time, undecided.

His interlocutor does not have much hope of finding "the colour" of his world. This can mean two things: either he has no hope of deciding which side to take between the two ideologies / cultures that are in conflict within himself; or what he calls his world has now lost any "colour" and therefore does not make sense to return to it. He has lost the characteristics that made him just recognizable as his own.

A third hypothesis about the meaning of the last assertion of the video is that the one that says it lived experiences and cultures different from his original and that the changes derived from such experiences do not allow him to return to it; somewhat as happens to Changez at the end of the novel by Mohsin Hamid.