Quotes by Sharanya Haridas

In the West, people learn through the Socratic tradition. The education system was influenced by Western philosophy and is based on constantly questioning the knowledge that’s handed to you and arriving at the truth through that process of questioning. The Indian system took off from the Guru-Shishyha tradition in which your virtue as a student lay in taking tradition or parampara as it is given to you and passing it on to the next generation in the exact same way.

Modernity is kind of a tradition and tradition itself is not a rulebook. Its a dialogue and a dialectical process— just as tradition affects us, we too affect tradition and culture, and we change it.

A generation is not defined by the options it has but by the choices it makes.

We think that history is created in the big things, in the big events, but history is also created in the small things that we do every day, in the personal choices we make— to think or not to think, to hold our tongues or to speak up, to act or not to act. Our actions have a ripple effect on those around us. Every time we conform or dont, were shaping the world into our vision or someone elses vision. The universe isnt made up of atoms its made up of stories, and these stories are shaped in college campuses and coffee houses around the country, not just in boardrooms and government buildings.

The internet in general and social networking sites in particular are making people more reclusive than social.

For people who are not on a particular social networking site, it can seem like youre not even living on the same planet— youre essentially not functioning in the same frame.

The characters so many Bollywood actresses portray are ultimately flat, uncomplicated, two-dimensional stock characters that typically range between the girl-next-door and the diva. They may be flawed in small ways, but ultimately lack nuance, conform to and reinforce cultural expectations of a wholesome but ultimately submissive Indian women. The likability of these flat and boring characters hold the actresses off screen reputations in good stead but reinforce the very norms that imprison and render so many Indian women vulnerable to disrespect and sexism.