Quote image editor
“Our self is not constructed by claiming one side of a duality. Rather we are fashioned as drops of water, of the same abundant substance as the ocean. We have within our small selves all the properties, all the constitutive molecules that make up the limitless whole. We are the many, held in the one. We are fractal images of the ultimate reality. If we embraced this wholeness within ourselves, perhaps we would be less anxious as men about the feminine within, less anxious as heterosexuals about our (perhaps unexplored) capacity to love someone of the same sex, less anxious as Hindus about the evidence of Muslim culture in our lives, less anxious as ‘upper castes’ about the breaching of our spaces by the “lower”, and generally speaking less anxious as “us” about the lurking presence of “them” in us. We could relax into our porosity. We would no longer need to feel small, threatened and in constant need of securing our borders, rallying our defences against being overwhelmed by the “Other”.” — Shabnam Virmani