The much-lauded parliamentary democracy in India has been unable to protect a genuine democratic set-up in Kashmir.

For Pakistan, Kashmir represents the infeasibility of secular nationalism and underscores the need for an Islamic theocracy in the subcontinent.

For India, Kashmir lends credibility to its secular nationalist image.

The increasing communalization of Indian politics is a juggernaut that annihilates the myth of secularism in India.

The rhetoric of hate and binarisms pervades the politics of the "Third-World" and of the West.

In establishment Indian and Pakistani thought, Kashmiris are defined as different from the nationals of the two countries.

You have to see every unit of currency that passes through your hands as a seed to your financial future.

In this neighbourhood people don't venture out after dark. It's not safe for them. Only the terminally stupid and the criminally motivated come out at this hour.

I hate forcing myself to go to bed to avoid committing suicide.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

There is something very appealing about a room which one occupied as a child; it brings back one's childhood more vividly than anything else I know.

One should not be too difficult. An artist should not treat himself like an enemy.

There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.

In a sense, Britain inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we've undertaken in the last century.

I almost never do free writing. Unless I am forcing my students to do it.

The body is mortal and the mind is mortal; both, being compounds, must die.