What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

Politically I don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country.

... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.

So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement.

All I ever wanted was a world without maps.

That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.

Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?" I didn't say anything.