As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these: a) Anything can happen to anyone. and b) It is best to be prepared.

I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.

After Iraq, there's been Libya, there's Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

Delhi is a very maligned city, and deservedly so. Yet there's something about it. It's a secret city, it doesn't hang out its wares. It's like a very deep river. Floating right up on top are the institutions of contemporary power: government, politics, media, and then there's the bureaucracy, the diplomatic missions. But it's also the city of intellectual debate, of protest, it's the city where people from all over the country converge to express their anger. And then, underneath all that, there's this crumbling, ancient city, a confluence of so much history.

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.

Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.