Eshani

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“So that was it: now that she thinks he’s “one of us” she can lecture him. She’s far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine. For her, normality—however messy—is far more comprehensible.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.”
― Shashi Tharoor, Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers

“The ‘modern’, ‘rational’, ‘scientific’, Christian European coloniser could not get himself to acknowledge that the lived experience and traditional knowledge of native societies gathered over millennia could teach him more than a thing or two about living in harmony with nature as opposed to merely salvaging what remained of it in the name of ‘sustainable’ development.”
― J Sai Deepak, India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution