That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much. - Arundhati Roy

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

Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them — just as an education, a precaution.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market-capitalism, American style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by the human intelligence, undone by human nature.