From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises–War and Shopping–simply will not work.

At times there’s something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism.Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who...

It isn’t a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This...

They visited him in saris, clumping gracelessly through red mud and long grass … and introduced themselves as Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan. Velutha introduced himself and his paralyzed brother Kuttappen (although he...

In a determined reversal of her inherent nature, Kochu Maria now, as a policy, hardly ever believed anything that anybody said.

There are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot – that sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful, sideways staring eyes.

To understand history,’ Chacko said, ‘we have to go inside and listen to what they’re saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that raised his flag and knotted arm in anger. She hoped that under his...

Ammu’s tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.

Then to give the kids a historical perspective, Chacko told them about the earth woman. He made them imagine that the earth – 4600 million years old – was a 46 year old woman- as...

Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a ‘real’ war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high...

We ought not to speak only about the economics of globalization, but about the psychology of globalization. It’s like the psychology of a battered woman being faced with her husband again and being asked to...

If you’re happy in a dream, does that count?

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries...

But what was there to say?Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely...

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to...

I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesn’t mean you’re a democratic country. They’re a very vitally important part of a democracy. But there...

But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the...

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.

Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To...

People often don’t understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to...

Any government’s condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what’s happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance...

It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was...

To fuel yet another war this time against Iraq by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TVspecials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain...

He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.

The time has come, the Walrus said. Perhaps things will become worse and then better. Perhaps there’s a small godup in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she’s on her...

She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…

Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness...

Bog je zamenjen Marksom, Satana buržoazijom, raj besklasnim društvom, a crkva partijom, dok su vrsta i cilj putovanja ostali slični. Trka s preponama, na čijem cilju čeka nagrada.

If you think of the world as a global village, a fight between India and Pakistan is like a fight between the poorest people in the poorest quarters – the Adivasis and the Dalits. And...

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

They looked at each other. They weren’t thinking anymore. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later. Lay Ter.

They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.

It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it...

She discovered that underneath the aspect of the Rumpled Porcupine, a tortured Marxist was at war with an impossible, incurable Romantic – who forgot the candles, who broke the wine glasses, who forgot the ring....

Globalization means standardization. The very rich and the very poor must want the same things, but only the rich can have them.

DB: There’s a lot of talk about terrorism. In fact, it’s become almost an obsession for the media in the United States. But it’s a very narrow definition of terrorism.AR: Yes. It completely ignores the...

To call someone ‘anti-American’, indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than...

Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?

How can you measure progress if you don’t know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the “market” put a price on things – food, clothes, electricity, running water – when...

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not...

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...

That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

In effect, terrorists now have the power to ignite war. They almost have their finger on the nuclear button. They almost have the status of heads of state. And that has enhanced the effectiveness and...