Aakriti Gupta

“The air was icy, Mari came back in, grabbed a coat and went out again. Outside, far from the eyes of everyone, she lit a cigarette. She smoked slowly and guiltlessly, thinking about the young woman, the piano music she could hear and life outside the walls of Villete which was becoming unbearably difficult for everyone.
In Mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy but to an excess of order. Society had more and more rules and laws that contradicted the rules and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Too often, poverty and deprivation get covered as events. That is, when some disaster strikes, when people die. Yet, poverty is about much more than starvation deaths or near famine conditions. It is the sum total of a multiplicity of factors. The weightage of some of these varies from region to region, society to society, culture to culture. But at the core is a fairly compact number of factors. They include not just income and calorie intake. Land, health, education, literacy, infant mortality rates and life expectancy are also some of them. Debt, assets, irrigation, drinking water, sanitation and jobs count too. You can have the mandatory 2,400 or 2,100 calories a day and yet be very poor. India’s problems differ from those of a Somalia or Ethiopia in crisis. Hunger—again just one aspect of poverty—is far more complex here. It is more low level, less visible and does not make for the dramatic television footage that a Somalia and Ethiopia do. That makes covering the process more challenging—and more important. Many who do not starve receive very inadequate nutrition. Children getting less food than they need can look quite normal. Yet poor nutrition can impair both mental and physical growth and they can suffer its debilitating impact all their lives. A person lacking minimal access to health at critical moments can face destruction almost as surely as one in hunger.”
― P Sainath, Everybody loves a good drought

“They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.”
― Bob Monkhouse, Crying With Laughter: My Life Story

“National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.”
― Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery