Yash Vijayvargiya

“Multilate. Ha Ha Ha,' said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. 'Its all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a see saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures. Especially when the foreign hand is always interfering to destabilize us. Did you know the CIA is trying to sabotage the Family Planning Programme?”
― Rohinton Mistry

“You fellows are amazing,' the sweaty cook roared over the stoves. 'Everything happens to you only. Each time you come here, you have a new adventure story to entertain us”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Oh, Anyone can make a quilt,' she said modestly. 'It's just scraps, from the clothes you've sewn.'
'Yes, but the talent is in joining the pieces, the way you have.'
'Look,' Om pointed, 'look at that - the poplin from our very first job.'
'You remember,' said Dina, pleased. 'And how fast you finished those first dresses. I thought I had two geniuses.'
'Hungry stomachs were driving our fingers,' chuckled Ishvar.
'Then came that yellow calico with orange strips. And what a hard time this young fellow gave me. Fighting and arguing about everything.'
'Me?Argue?Never.'
.........
He steeped back, pleased with himself, as though he had elucidated an intricate theorem. 'So that's the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than the square'.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors all had in common was their subversiveness. Some, like Gorky or Gold, were overtly subversive in their political aims; others, like Fitzgerald and Mark Twain, were in my opinion more subversive, if less obviously so. I told them we would come back to this term, because my understanding of it was somewhat different from its usual definition. I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.” I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books