WHY IS ARUNDHATI ROY DIFFERENT?

Reading or listening to Arundhati Roy is always a learning experience for me. And hugely satisfying intellectually. Of course, I share her world view, but what amazes me about her is her way of thinking. She can think in a whole new way, without any allegiance to any body or thing or whatever.

The following are some quotes from an exclusive interview published in the Tehelka magazine dated 05.11.05.

** In India, we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between corporate capitalism and feudalism - it's a deadly cocktail.

** To expose things is quite different from being able to effectively resist things. I am more interested now in whether there are new stategies of resistance.

** Somebody like me runs a serious risk of thinking that I'm more important than I actually am.. whereas actually is it or is it not? It's a difficult call.

**Fame is also a gruesome kind of capitalism, you can accumulate it, bank it, live off it. But it can suffocate you, block off the blood vessels to your brain, isolate you, make you lose touch. It pushes you up to the surface and you forget how to keep your ear to the ground.

**There is the danger,especially for a writer of fiction, that you can become somebody who does what is expected of you.

**Money is like nuclear waste. What you do with it, where you dump it, what problems it creates, what it changes, these are incredibly complicated things.

** Success is so tinny and boring. Everyone is promoting themselves hard.

** Giving money away is dangerous and complicated and in some ways are against my political beliefs - I do not subscibe to the politicas of good intentions - but what do I do? Sit on it and accumulate more? ..It's a peculiar problem, this problem of excess, and it's embarassing to even talk about it in a land of so much pain and poverty.

**People, ideologues who believe in a kind of redemption, a perfect and ultimate society, are terrifying. The idea of perfection has often been a precursor to genocide.

MRINAL BOSE