Gita Mehta > Quotes

“The extraordinary thing about inventing a persona is that one is loathe to give it up, especially if the fiction sits comfortably.”
― Gita Mehta, A River Sutra

“In his attempt to frighten me, my father had made me realize that to prevent suffering a man must be capable of suffering, that a man who cannot suffer is not alive.”
― Gita Mehta, A River Sutra

“Without desire there is no life. Everything will stand still. Become emptiness. In fact sir, be dead.”
― Gita Mehta

“In a Cuban writers union, there was some confusion about what the toast should be? It was the Gita Mehta who solved the riddle and said,
"I purpose a toast to the health of the written words”
― Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East

“There is that difference between being kicked in the teeth and reading a description of being kicked in the teeth. Some call it existential.”
― Gita Mehta, Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East

“Hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

The concept of nationhood we took so unthinkingly from nineteenth-century Europe is too constricting for our diversity.

If you want self respect, Dr. Ambedkar said, change your religion.
If you want equality, change your religion.
If you want power, change your religion.
That religion which forbids humanitarian behavior between men is not a religion but a penalty.
That religion which regards the recognition of human dignity as a sin is not a religion but a sickness.
That religion which allows one to touch a foul animal but not a man is not a religion but a madness.

Everyone knew religion was India's line of no return. Beyond that line lay chaos.

To the philosophers of ancient India the forest was the symbol of an idealized cosmos. The great Indian philosophical academies were all held in groves of trees, an acknowledgment that the forest - self sufficient, endlessly regenerative - combined in itself the diversity and the harmony that were the aspiration, the goal of Indian metaphysics.

The assault on the senses. The caress of the senses. Surely God made India at his leisure.”
― Gita Mehta, Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India

“... to prevent suffering a man must be capable of suffering, ... a man who cannot suffer is not alive.”
― Gita Mehta, A River Sutra

“The two things vital to success: how to sense approaching danger and how to be flexible.

This is where the war for the possession of India was fought - pitting Aryan reason against the primal beliefs of the tribals.”
― Gita Mehta, A River Sutra