Vinayak Hegde

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Maybe that is why we are all interested in the stories of others, especially the drastic ones. So we can vicariously experience what could very well have been our own story but for a quirk of fate.”
― Ajit Harsinghani, The Living Road

“The shopkeeper is very efficient, has an efficient home delivery system and knows the tastes and price considerations of his customers. But he is labelled ‘unorganized’ by our experts and national income data and his contribution thereby diminished. The footfalls in his shop cannot be measured using Western models [since there is no place to keep anybody’s foot inside his shop!] and so he is derided and abused. It is like clubbing housewives along with prostitutes in our Census data to show them that they are involved in ‘unproductive’ activities. These are economic constructs imposed by the west on the rest and it is a form of terminological terrorism which is mouthed ad-nauseam by our economists and policy planners without understanding their implications.”
― R. Vaidyanathan, India Uninc.

“Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me