Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For a child everything is wonderful, be it going to a fair or visting a temple with parents. This happiness and enthusiasm needs to reflect in my writing.
Coming from a middle-class background of Northern Karnataka, where good education was the only insurance policy, I started reading and writing very early.
Mythology is part of our heritage, part of our identity at times because anywhere in India you will find the name of Rama or Krishna in one or the other form.
Increasing the sale of liquor may benefit the government in terms of revenue. But liquor is a social evil, and its biggest victims are women and their children.
From fiction, you do not get to learn much because it is only imagination. Whereas, from non-fiction, people can understand and learn from the realities it covers.
Most people share a yearning to be something bigger than them. Something they can be excited about and something that will challenge them to go beyond being average.
I came from a middle-class family. My father was a professor in a medical college, and my mother was a schoolteacher. We led a good life but we did not have much money.
Social entrepreneurs come from different backgrounds and are by and large, starved of capital. Such socialpreneurs must have extraordinary passion to follow their dreams.
In my work, 80 per cent of the time people cheat, they run away with money, they lie but there are good things too. And I choose to write about the good and positive things.
I will continue to work for people, but not from any political party. What I can do do as a Rajya Sabha member, I can do without being a member too, perhaps even more efficiently.
The criteria for writing mythological books are different. Because the results are known, the end is known. Somebody has created that limit and you have to play within that limit.
If I give someone flowers, what will they really do with it. If I take food, the person could be diabetic... But books are a source of knowledge, I have great thirst for knowledge.
I wanted to become an engineer and I believed in myself. I was the lone girl to enrol for engineering studies, then. But the college provided me an opportunity to excel in my life.
I am touched by my readers who loved my books. All the stories are true incidents in life. Now I have realised, any amount of imagination will not be as beautiful as the real life.
So, as a child in school, I used to write essays on how I spent my holiday or about a visit to a temple. I used to document small things and enjoyed the process of writing even then.
Availability of water is critical for sanitation projects. Without water, toilets can't be kept clean. Places where there is no drinking water, water for toilets becomes complicated.
For someone who wants to write a story, they should go on thinking about the story. When it comes up to a level, where it has reached your neck that's when you should go about writing it.
I believe people from the film industry, musicians, dancers, artists and writers are all internally connected. The form of expression externally may vary, but we are connected internally.
When there is money, there is also greed. Everyone wants to talk to you when there is money. Only if you have the passion for it, you must become a philanthropist, else it'll become a headache.
I lost many friendships because of my wealth. When my friends met me, they had an agenda in mind. Just because I had money, they expected one thing or the other from me, which they didn't before.
People often ask me how I get so many unique experiences while they get none. I tell them the difference is in the sensitivity. I can observe those small emotions, which may look trivial to others.
Though most of my titles are translated into about 7 to 8 languages, I feel that translations, to some extent, can lose the flavour of the colloquial words used otherwise in the regional narrative.
The day I stopped drinking milk' is a very sensitive story telling the tale of how we forget what is 'normal' for us falls under the category of 'expensive' or 'unaffordable' for middle or poor class.
During my younger days, we didn't have digital media or electronic gadgets the way we do now. So the best part of my day was the one I spent either in listening to stories from my elders or reading them.
I was in Kashi to take the holy dip, and when you go to Kashi you have to give up something that you enjoy the most. I gave up shopping, particularly sarees, from thereon. I now only buy the essential items.
There have been plenty of experiences that I wished to write about but found them to be somewhat similar to each other. Later I realised that though they are of similar nature but each of them has changed me in a different way.
For every job you require a kind of mindset. To be a teacher one should be knowledgeable. To be a software engineer you should know computer data system analysis, computer language etc. So, my mindset is not aligned with politics.
When a mother feels cold, she asks the child to wear a sweater. Our concept of poverty is that way. When we do a project and people receive our help, we may think that they are getting benefited, but is this what they really wanted?
With one or two children at home, I feel that parents concentrate too much on them and hence children lose touch with reality. They get whatever they desire and fail to understand that in real life you may or may not get what you wish for.
Class does not mean huge possession of money. Mother Teresa was a classy woman. So is Manjula Bhargava, a great mathematician of Indian origin. The concept that you automatically gain class by acquiring money is an outdated thought process.
We can spend Rs 5,000 for a meal at the Taj and thousands on all kinds of shopping, but we're always stingy about books. We always think of borrowing. Why? Writers can use some support. If you have space and money, you should buy your own books.
When we started out, I kept wondering, what are the rules of philanthropy? And it turns out that there are rules for it. And nobody could talk about that. There is no set formula for this because anything with a human being cannot have a formula.
When you are chiselling a sculpture, it won't happen in one day, it happens over a period of time. It's the same way that my personality has changed over the past 15 years. I am not the same person I used to be and my life experiences are what have made me.
My ad-hoc empirical formula is that wherever you grow a lot of rice, there is a lot of art developing as well. My theory goes on to say that after having a nice meal of rice, one feels lethargic and don't think of work. When you don't think of work, you think of art.
My first exposure to sanitation issues occurred when I got admission into an engineering college. They probably didn't want to admit me and informed me that there was no ladies toilet in the college. I was adamant and pursued my studies in engineering in that very college.
It was March 1974, I was in my MTech final year when I came across a notice which stated - Telco requires bright, young engineers at a salary of Rs 1,500. This was big money at that time. But that notice followed with a line that said lady students need not apply. I was agitated!
All that I can say is people who represents Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha should speak our language and represent our interests. How can your neighbour safeguard your interests when he cannot even speak your language or understand your difficulties. So, it is better to have our own people.
There were instances when I felt cheated because my feeling of social service was neither acknowledged or reciprocated by the second party. It is with growing age and experience that I realised, I was doing it for myself and not for others. Hence, I found my happiness and satisfaction in it.
One needs determination to bring in changes in the lives of Devadasis. I would approach them wearing pants and t-shirt and without a bindi, they would chase me away. When I narrated the experience to my father, he told me to don traditional wear and dress like them. After bringing in changes in my dressing style, the Devadasis welcomed me.