The last time I read anything by Arundhati Roy was The Algebra of Infinite Justice back in college. If it’s any consolation, my Communist tendencies have taken a beating since then. However, after having read her new collection of essays,  Broken Republic, I’m starting to think that she’s either misunderstood or  intentionally misinterpreted by her detractors. There’s no question that she’s a Maoist sympathizer but certainly not the traitor she’s made out to be.

She’s also quite aware of the inherent ridiculousness of party ideologies.

Each faction believes itself to be the only genuinely revolutionary Marxist party or political formation. Each believes the other has misinterpreted Communist theory and misunderstood history. Anyone who isn’t a card-carrying member of one or the other group will be able to see that none of them is entirely wrong or entirely right about what they say. But bitter splits, not unlike those in religious sects, are the natural corollary of the rigid conformity to the party line demanded by all Communist parties. So they dip into a pool of insults that dates back to the Russian and Chinese revolutions, to the great debates between Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, to Chairman Mao’s red book, and hurl them at each other. They accuse each other of the ‘incorrect application’ of ‘Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought’, almost as though it’s an ointment that’s being rubbed in the wrong place.

While I had problems with her rather accommodationist views on Naxal extremism, Broken Republic was quite an interesting and enlightening read.

“I guess to understand this John, we have to understand the thought processes of the looters as they were looting. And I guess what they were thinking was, ‘Oh look at all that looting, I wonder if I should join in. There are a number of factors urging me to do so. I feel a sense of social alienation as if people like me have been abandoned by mainstream society as the unwanted dregs of a skewed and unfair system. I feel a lack of hope – there are few jobs even fewer good jobs. I just can’t seem to find the opportunity to escape from a cycle of poverty, broken homes and broken communities around me. From generations of decline and neglect, let down by the state, let down by my family, let down by a pitiless capitalist system which has scant regard for the unfortunate. I feel disenfranchised by political system and class that fails to engage or represent me and when I see the excesses and unbridled inquisitiveness of the economic food-chain, the corrupt and self-interest in my nation’s media and politics I feel even more abandoned not of my making.

Adding all that up and seeing the opportunity for some seriously cut-price bargains – well, no price bargains – well I still don’t really feel like looting.

Oh hang on, I just remembered. I’m a c*nt. Count me in!’”

— Andy Zaltzman (The Bugle, Episode 164)

Here’s what Douglas Hofstadter writes about relationship analogies in I Am A Strange Loop.

If two people are romantically involved (or even if they aren’t, but at least one of them feels there’s a potential spark), then almost any conversation between them about any romance whatsoever, no matter who it involves, stands a good chance of being heard by one or both of them as putting a spotlight on their own situation. Such boomerang-back is inevitable because romances, even very good ones, are filled with uncertainty and yearning. We are always on the lookout for clues or insights into our romantic lives, and analogies are among the greatest sources of clues and insights.

Excerpts from Conan O’Brien’s slightly inappropriate but mostly hilarious commencement address at Dartmouth.

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.  It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention.

…

But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come.  The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

…

And there is no greater cliché in a commencement address than “follow your dream.”  Well I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change.  And that’s okay.  Four years ago, many of you had a specific vision of what your college experience was going to be and who you were going to become.  And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very different from what you imagined.  Your roommates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sexual orientation changed.   I bet some of you have changed your sexual orientation since I began this speech.  I know I have.  But through the good and especially the bad, the person you are now is someone you could never have conjured in the fall of 2007.

True that.

Taken from here.

“How does he go before the Australian people dressed in the clothes of a Liberal leader and deny more than 20 years of Liberal engagement with the science of climate change?” she said.

Mr Abbott then took another point of order.

“The question was about the Lodge, not the dodge – that’s what it was.”

After outlining her belief in climate change and the need for a price on carbon, Ms Gillard launched another attack on Mr Abbott.

“If he wants to debate political honesty in this place, then bring it on,” she said.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election telling them about his $11 billion black hole?”

Amid roars from the Opposition benches and futile attempts by Mr Jenkins to restore order, the Prime Minister went on.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election saying [Pauline Hanson's] One Nation would write his economic policy?” she said.

“Did he go to the Australian people before the last election saying senior members of his frontbench like the shadow treasurer would agitate for the return of WorkChoices? No he did not.

“So if we want to have a debate about political honesty then bring it on, Mr Speaker, bring it on because we have the most hollow man with the least conviction sitting in the Opposition Leader’s chair we’ve ever seen in this Parliament.”

“Remember that time the car totaled and you couldn’t stop laughing? You made smiley faces with the blood off your arm!”

“Yeah, I was probably just too high…and mighty. And you were all stoic and ranted on about meaning and reason and weirdly enough, Leibiniz.”

“Heh. Still love your conjunctions I see. Remember what happened after that?”

“Yeah.”

“We should do that again sometime.”

“Volatility frequently occurs when everyone suddenly realizes that the stock market’s just a consensual mass delusion based on fictitious valuing of abstract assets. It’s like finding out Santa Claus is real because you catch him robbing your house.”

- Wyatt Cenac on The Daily Show

“The land of Mahatma Gandhi has been bloodied by terrorists whom we shall not spare; Terrorists are waging a war against India. We should be prepared for a long battle against terrorism.”

- Narendra Modi in response to the recent Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts

“I’ve had a total recalibration of my mind, you know. I mean, it’s like, I’ve been banging my head against this 19th century type, um, what? Thought mode? Construct? Human construct? Well, the wall doesn’t exist. It’s not there, you know. I mean, they tell you, look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is no tunnel. There’s just no structure. The underlying order is chaos.”

-Slacker (1991)/Richard Linklater

Isn’t that what being young is about, believing secretly that you would be the one person in the history of man that would live forever?-Vanilla Sky