Arundhati Roy
Indian novelist, essayist, and activist
The numbers
2 + 4 = 6
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 5, 7, 8. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 6 — The Caretaker
Six is read as the number of responsibility — family, service, the assumption that if something needs doing for someone else you are the one who does it. The tradition treats it warmly and then names the trap plainly: care given without limit becomes control, and the person who is always needed rarely learns to ask. Six is described as the number most likely to be exhausted and least likely to say so.
Complete lines
Line of Action
The 8-1-6 row complete. Read as follow-through — the traditional marker of someone whose plans reliably become events.
Line of Expression
A complete line in the grid.
Cooperation
A complete line in the grid.
Care
A complete line in the grid.
Repeated numbers
1 appears 4 times
Concentrated self-direction. Read as conviction that does not need external agreement — and does not always seek it.
What is missing
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 7
Read as reluctance to sit with an unresolved question. Associated with wanting the working answer rather than the true one.
Missing 8
Read as discomfort with power and money — not incapacity, but an unwillingness to claim authority openly.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 5 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 6 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Budha
Mercury. Intellect, commerce, speech. Read as quickness and adaptability.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
Independence itself came to us as what Gandhi famously called a "wooden loaf'-a notional freedom tainted by the blood of the thousands who died during Partition.
Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. I know the story of the Kashmiri pandits. I also know that the story that these Panun Kashmir pandits put out is false. However, this does not mean that injustice was not done.The British drew the map of India in 1899— so that country became a colonizing power the moment it became independent, and the Indian state has militarily intervened in Manipur, in Nagaland, in Mizoram, in Kashmir, in Telangana, during the Naxalbari uprising, in Punjab, in Hyderabad, in Goa, in Junagarh…
If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4 600 000 000 years old. It could end in an afternoon.
Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.
India lives in her villages, we are told in every other sanctimonious public speech, That's bullshit. India doesn't live in her villages. India dies in her villages. India gets kicked around in her villages. India lives in her cities. India's villages just live only to serve her cities. Her villages are her citizen's vassals and for that reason must be controlled and kept alive, but only just.
Big Dams are to a nation's 'development' what nuclear bombs are to its military arsenal. They're both weapons of mass destruction. They're both weapons governments use to control their own people. Both twentieth-century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They're both malignant indications of a civilization turning upon itself. They represent the severing of the link, not just the link -- the understanding-- between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers, air to life, and the earth to human existence.
Sourced from Wikiquote, restricted to the subject’s own sourced sections.