I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

But can we, should we, let apprehensions about the future immobilize us in the present?

He held her as though she was a gift. Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious.

The idea of justice - even just dreaming of justice - is revolutionary. The language of human rights tends to accept a status quo that is intrinsically unjust - and then tries to make it more accountable.

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

I am an artist and a writer, and I do think that one always places oneself in the picture to see where one fits.

I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised.