Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries.

A sparrow lay dead on the backseat. She had found her way through a hole in the windscreen, tempted by some seat-sponge for her nest. She never found her way out. No one noticed her panicked car-window appeals. She died on the backseat, with her legs in the air. Like a joke.

Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

the truth is that it's far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

Anyway, what is a country? When people say, "Tell me about India," I say, "Which India?.... The land of poetry and mad rebellion? The one that produces haunting music and exquisite textiles? The one that invented the caste system and celebrates the genocide of Muslims and Sikhs and the lynching of Dalits? The country of dollar billionaires? Or the one in which 800 million live on less than half-a-dollar a day? Which India?"

I am a Maoist sympathiser. I'm not a Maoist ideologue, because the communist movements in history have been just as destructive as capitalism.