Arun Vijay

‘Why are you dressed like a 1980’s rapist?’, she said as I put my books beside her. Ignoring her comment I said, ‘I don’t know if I'm being paranoid but every time I walk-in, the librarian looks at me suspiciously.’ I sat next to her putting my pen in my mouth out of habit. ‘That’s what happens if you fool around with his daughter.’ ‘What?’, I said almost chocking over my pen. ‘A little heads-up would have been nice.’ ‘I thought you guys did a full background check before fooling around with anyone’, she said slyly. ‘Oh I'm sorry if I don’t have contacts in the INTERPOL otherwise I would have carried a list of most wanted criminals with me always.’ ‘Are you mad at me?’ ‘Do I look happy?’, I snapped back. (silence) As the time passed I could sense an invisible wall building between us. ‘Does he know about us?’, I asked finally. ‘You still on that? I don’t know. Maybe’ ‘So that’s the reason my library fines are touching sky.’ ‘Hey, cut it out. He’s a nice man.’ ‘Yeah sure, for al...

A letter to mussolini from an teen admirer  of his. The Estimable Mr. Benito Mussolini To what do I owe the honour of being posed this question by Your Excellency himself? Indeed, such leaders as you have more pressing matters to attend to than inconsequential questions from such plebes as me. Deviating thus from the ostensible votaristic reaction that seemed to sully my first sentence, I must proceed to answer your question in good faith. With a soul that quakes with fear at the very thought of disobliging you, I must command all the courage at my disposal to reveal to you that, while it is not for me to answer on behalf of my fellow plebes, I do most certainly not admire either you or the Fuhrer. Times, as you can unquestionably behold in person, have changed, and even by the generally racist paradigms of the early twentieth century, Hitler’s conduct had been morbidly beyond redemption. While the aversion towards you appears considerably benign in comparison, I derive...

" P ersons have a right or liberty to follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and not be  subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others. " Spake thus John Locke, among the most momentous leaders of the Enlightenment, the father of liberalism. It is not solely by virtue of our Constitution, but also in accordance with the most sagacious wisdom of our ancestors that we, the people of India, discern in one another an individual in one’s right, ever so unique. For it is nature’s very ordination that one respect the autonomy of the other. As do differ the genetic anatomy of two individuals, so do differ their streams of thought. A society best treads on the path of progress with free and forthright exchange of assorted opinions, for the benefit thereof is not merely intellectual but often pecuniary. The right to unfettered expression is an indispensable component of true freedom, for it is an impetus for the truth to emerg...