Isolation is the cruelest of punishments, and it had never occurred to me that I was something less than human because I wasn’t a man. One of my female classmates eventually quit, another suffered a complete nervous breakdown. Survival was
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“Indians are the most depressed people in the world and women are fifty per cent more likely to suffer episodes of depression than men.”
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
“In its most common usage, maryada, or modesty, connotes social traditions and boundaries, the mores and norms a woman must abide by to earn love and respect from her family and immediate community.”
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
“Fantasizing about an impossibly idealized kind of love they’d seen an actor perform on-screen. Yet, all their real-world efforts were extremely pragmatic, often sacrificing the love they fantasized about as a price for earning status, security, and financial freedom.”
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
“Expecting a woman in this landscape to demonstrate dissent by cutting ties with her family—the only institution that provides her material security in the absence of a supportive state or an inclusive market that values her labour—is, perhaps, asking for too much.”
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
― Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
“Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” By that sentence, Tolstoy meant that, in order to be happy, a marriage must succeed in many different respects: sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline, religion, in-laws, and other vital issues. Failure in any one of those essential respects can doom a marriage even if it has all the other ingredients needed for happiness.”
― Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
― Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Swarna’s 2025 Year in Books
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