Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.

In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms.

Dams are the temples of secular India and almost worshipped. They are huge, wet cement flags that wave in our minds. They're the symbol of nationalism to many.

Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.

Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.

Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy." Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it. Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.

I sometimes think I was perhaps the only girl in India whose mother said, "Whatever you do, don't get married". For me, when I see a bride, it gives me a rash. I find them ghoulish, almost.