Book Excerpts

We hunkered down every time a vehicle passed by. Sitting inside a car on a humid September afternoon in Chennai, even with the windows rolled down, was stifling. The clock ticked ever so slowly towards 4 p.m. My colleague Satish Kumar and I had arrived at CIT Colony in central

WHY NOW? ‘Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn’t filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.’ NAOMI KLEIN   Our current way of doing things – the ‘me culture’ – isn’t working. The world we all share is more divided and unequal than ever. Rates of anxiety, depression

One afternoon, you get very upset. We are lying on the bed in the guest room. For some reason you’ve taken a fancy to this place; it’s like a cave you say. With the light falling through leaves, from the window. It’s a room I hardly use on my own,

“Did you break up with someone?” At first the question made me angry. I thought it sexist, stereotypical, disheartening. There was no death of a relation-ship that made me so in need of freedom that I’d alter myself. The more the breakup question was asked, the more it made me

‘It seemed clear to me that the history of the life on the earth presents an unbroken chain of evidence going to prove the importance of the female.’ Unconventional ideas can appear from anywhere, even the most conventional of places. The township of Concord in Michigan is one of those