I remember sitting in a lecture hall in a college in Hyderabad in front of an audience of five or six hundred students. On my left, chairing the even… - Arundhati Roy
""
I remember sitting in a lecture hall in a college in Hyderabad in front of an audience of five or six hundred students. On my left, chairing the event, was the vice-chancellor of the university. On my right, a professor of poetry. The vice-chancellor whispered in my ear, “You shouldn’t spend any more time on fiction. Your political writing is the thing to concentrate on.” The professor of poetry whispered, “When will you get back to writing fiction? That is your true calling. This other stuff you do is just ephemeral.”... Sitting between the two professors, I enjoyed their contradictory advice.
If you’ll pardon me for making this somewhat prosaic observation – maybe that’s what life is, or ends up being most of the time: a rehearsal for a performance that never eventually materializes.
I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.
Independence itself came to us as what Gandhi famously called a "wooden loaf'-a notional freedom tainted by the blood of the thousands who died during Partition.
