The Algebra of Infinite Justice

I’ve been reading a book by Arundhati Roy. It’s a compilation of her essays. She writes so beautifully. It takes my breath away. I’ve been carrying this book around for a couple years. I bought it when I lived in Mumbai…carried it back to the US…never managed to read it…brought it back over here…and then the trek to Bangladesh. Now that I finally started reading it, I’m so thankful I never gave up on it. I think its amazing how beautifully and powerfully she writes about things that are rather horrible. (the first essay I read was about Nuclear Weapons, and her response to the successful nuclear bomb tests that India did in May of 1998. the second one is about big dams in India, and the environmental and human devastation they cause.) I realize the things she says are politically charged, and I wonder if there’s an equivalent to her in the US…and what I’d think of him/her (cause I’m sure infatuated with Roy).

So I realize its out of context (and I’m not sure that you can buy her essays in the US), but here are some of my favorite sections so far…

“The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.

Which means exactly what?

…To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”

“How can you measure Progress if you don’t know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the ‘market’ put a price on things – food, clothes, electricity, running water – when it doesn’t take into account the real cost of production.”

“Now more than ever before, te ragged army needs reinforcements. If we let it die, if we allow the struggle to be crushed, if we allow the people to be brutalized, we will lose the most precious thing we have. Our spirit, or what’s left of it.”