panI wanted to like this. Really. But I didn't. I disliked Roys writing style from the start, and even though she's writing about very important topics, she just seems to be a pissed woman to me. Which is understandable, but if I want to read about pissed women I go to the internet. Her hints and her irony distroyed it for me.
pickI was waiting for my library hold on Roy‘s new collection of essays, so I decided to reread this one that I own. In her dust jacket photo, Roy (born in 1961) looked young when this collection was published in 2001. The content concerns socio-political issues 2 decades past, but her insights & witty style remain engaging. In the title essay: “President George Bush can no more ‘rid the world of evil-doers‘ than he can stock it with saints.” 5 stars
In the present circumstances, I‘d say the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. It‘s India‘s best export. (From: “The ladies have feelings, so… “ written in February 2001)
Nowadays I‘m introduced as something of a freak myself. I am, apparently, what is known in twenty-first century vernacular as a ‘writer-activist.‘ (Like a sofa-bed.)
What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain. But it is a terrible, terrible thing.
(Internet photo: activists protesting displacement of over a million people because of dams on the Narmada River)
Let‘s just say we‘re an ancient people learning to live in a recent nation. The majority of India‘s citizens will not be able to identify its boundaries on a map, or say which language is spoken where or which god is worshipped in what region. To them the idea of India is, at best, a noisy slogan that comes around during wars and elections.
They were on the streets, celebrating India‘s nuclear bomb & simultaneously “condemning Western Culture” by emptying crates of Coke & Pepsi into public drains. I‘m a little baffled by their logic: Coke is Western Culture but the nuclear bomb is an old Indian tradition?
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(Image: video still from The God Must Be Crazy)
The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive and die only when you are dead.
The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be undiscriminating.
(Internet photo of Pokhran nuclear test.)
For marmots and voles and everything else on earth that is threatened and terrorized by the human race. [This book‘s dedication]
Starting this month, my version of the #TBRchallenge to always have at least one of my owned books in whatever mix of titles I currently happen to be reading. I‘m really looking forward to reading Arundhati Roy‘s new essay collection and it will be a wait before my library hold comes, so I‘m rereading her essays that were published in 2001.
The Algebra of Infinite Justice | 
