Arundhati Roy

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

It was expected of all good middle-class Indian people to build India and, as you know, Indians - when we say, 'build India,' it was all about being an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer. So it was this idea that professionals would build the country.

For a long time, I would go out of my way to have a personal appearance on the verge of an insane person, because it was closer to how I felt, but I looked so dumb. So, I just stopped. It was like, 'I'm just going to look like a banker.'