Felicity

“who feared God, but not death … who thought none below him but the base and unjust, none above him but the wise and virtuous’.”
― Charles Allen, Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

“The role played by women in history is as underwritten in India as anywhere, so it is only right to end with a mention of another woman of Kerala whose part in its history has only recently been publicly recognised. Her name was Velathu Lakshmikutty and she died in 2013 at the fine old age of 102 (see page 297). In 1952 she organised and led a march by women against the Manimalarkavu temple in Velur, Cochin, which – unbelievable as it seems to us today – was still requiring avarna women like herself to attend the Manimalarkavu pooram spring festival with breasts exposed. The protest that she led finally brought that particularly shaming form of caste discrimination to an end, although it serves as a reminder that the oppression of the powerless by the powerful is far from being a thing of the past.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“This travelling was never about gaining merit or the absolution of sins. It was always the journey that mattered, and what these travels could tell me about the country and its history – a history so alluring, so epic as to keep drawing me back. There is so damn much of it, and so much still unexamined, still disputed, still buried and waiting to be brought back into the light.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“As they approached Dhauli the elephant refused to go forward; nothing that Mark or the mahout did could persuade her to cross the open ground in front of them. Only then did Mark learn that they had come to the Kalinga battlefield, on which hundreds of war elephants are said to have died.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India