"It is not just a celebration of the new year; it serves as the bond that brings all Iranians together —
precisely because it is a national,
not a religious, celebration.
Iranians of diverse religions
and ethnic and tribal identities
all celebrate Nowruz.”
Haleh Esfandiari, founding director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, quoted by Louisa Shafia, Features correspondent, British Broadcasting Corporation
"Our community is a microscopic minority, but if we were able
to produce four out of 11 cricketers on the team at one point, surely you’d expect someone new to
have come up by now.”
Farokh Engineer, former Test wicketkeeper-batsman, sunday mid-day, August 25, 2024
"The division totally destroyed our lives, to be frank. Partition created turmoil... I’m as emotionally tied to Lahore as my mother was to
Bombay. It’s sad that I need
permission to remain here. This
is my home as much as that is. Why must I choose?”
On the train journey from Lahore in
Pakistan to Bombay in India, how partition in 1947 affected the life of two Parsi sisters, Shireen, an Indian and Amy, a Pakistani (not their real names), Anam Zakaria,
aljazeera.com, August 17, 2024
"Member of the Legislative Assembly Nitesh Rane asked real estate brokers to take an oath that they would not deal with non Hindus and would check Aadhaar cards before making any property deals.”
Umesh K. Parida, journalist, The
Times of India, July 15, 2024
"You have to know why you are
telling the story and how it will
resonate with people from the
writing stage itself. The moment
you grasp that, you can finally
decide you can be a director.”
Boman Irani, actor and director,
The Times of India, November 19, 2024
"We were poor, my father had
died with Rs 30 in his pocket.
At the outset, my dream was
to get Rs 10,000 a song and
in a month, make Rs 30,000.
We have so much more than
what one dreamed of.”
Farah Khan, director, whose mother Menaka Irani is a Parsi, The Times of India, July 4, 2022
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
Thomas Jefferson, third US president, quoted in Mouth & Foot Painting Artists notepad
"We grow over 20% of the fruit and vegetables in the world but process, Deloitte tells us, 4.5% of our fruit and 2.7% of our vegetables.”
Naushad Forbes, co-chairman, Forbes
Marshall; chairman, Centre for Technology
Innovation and Economic Research and Ananta Aspen Centre, past president, Confederation of Indian Industry; Business Standard, August 18, 2024
"India has enormous potential. But unless we take a cold hard look and acknowledge that self-importance is not the same thing as importance, we will not begin to understand how India risks being irrelevant. For honest patriots, it ought to be a shock how little India actually matters.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, contributing editor,
The Indian Express, February 1, 2023
"I thought to myself, museums
don’t have to be places where
objects come to die but where ideas can come to live. It is even more urgent today to reclaim our public institutions and turn them into
participatory platforms of
debate and dialogue.”
Nancy Adajania, Indian art critic, at a Kala Ghoda Arts Festival panel discussion,
submitted by reader Bachi Karkaria
"Would be lovely to see, with
all the claims this government makes about national pride and
all this chest beating about India as this great nation, some more money put into museums and archeological sites.”
William Dalrymple, historian, The
Indian Express, January 9, 2023
"India is set to become one of the three largest economies in the next decade and yet accounts for less than 2% of the EU’s (European Union) foreign trade.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president, European Commission, The Times of India, May 2, 2022
"Environmental impact
assessments done for new
airports recommend shooing
away birds from their age old flight path. The birds use alternate routes with difficulty and are often subject to threats of extinction. Use of drones exponentially reduces the alternate routes and keeps birds under constant stress.”
Prof (Dr) K. K. Sundaram, senior scientist and inventor, retired principal of engineering
colleges, Compassionate Friend, Beauty Without Cruelty, Summer 2022
"Stalking comes from trauma...
Stalkers lack impulse control.”
Dr Zirak Marker, a child, adolescent
and family psychiatrist, sunday mid-day,
September 11, 2022
"It’s the teacher that makes the
difference, not the classroom.”
Sir Michael Morpurg, British author,
Inspirational Quote, September 2022
"The demand for pork has gone
significantly high in the last few years, with consumption not
limited to sausages, ham and bacon at breakfast or Chinese dinners.”
Delzad Avari, chef, Delz Kitchen,
sunday mid-day, April 7, 2024
"Whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him
shall never thirst.”
Inscription from the Gospel of St John
on the fountain funded by Sir Cowasji
Jehangir Readymoney at St Thomas’
Cathedral in Bombay, sunday mid-day,
January 14, 2024