SEEN AND HEARD

“Sometimes you start judging yourself by not completing a book. I have reached a stage where I understand that I’m a book-lover, but that doesn’t mean I will like all the books. It’s okay if you don’t like a book. —Sonali Bendre, Actor, at the launch of Ashwin Sanghi’s ‘The vault of Vishnu’

“One of the reasons I made the film on Manto was to invoke the ‘Mantoiyat’ in us, the will to pursue truth, be more courageous, free spirited. And, more and more people are speaking up. They don’t want another Partition to happen. If Manto were alive today, he would have said, ‘Have you learned nothing from the past?’ —Nandita Das, Actor-director-writer, at a session on Manto at JLF

“Most people think that whenever a woman writes, she would be telling a tale from her own life. Perhaps the world doesn’t trust the imagination of women…. —Jokha Alharthi, Omani Author of ‘Celestial Bodies’, the first book by any Arab to win the Booker

“Holocaust is remembered and continuously documented so that it may never be repeated. And that’s the reason we must never forget what happened in the sub-continent 70 years back. We refuse to remember, that is why we don’t learn.  —Aanchal Malhotra, Author, at the session on ‘Partition Voices’