First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"I always thought I'd study Law, but when I moved to the UK in 1997 my aunt told me about mental health"
"My late mother had to deal with mental health issues and my aunt was so convinced it would resonate with me"
"I looked it up and felt it was definitely the right thing to do"
"to equip people with quality mental health care to make informed and healthy decisions about themselves, their relationships and their future"
"We also helped the group find a sense of purpose in life"
"Over the years I've had to learn to manage my time quite well. If you're going to strike a balance you've got to be disciplined with time. It also helps that on the work front I've a capable team that I trust so much. So, that gives me a bit of leeway to also do music and my television presenting on the side"
"I thoroughly enjoy television presenting. Over the years, I've learnt to immerse myself in the media space and I strive to teach my audience something they have not heard before each time I'm on air"
"So, we were just re-engaging for the second episode of our programme. We wanted to catch up with her and see how she was doing. However, to our surprise were the negative vibes that we got from people. They were cursing at her and some cursing at me for giving her an opportunity to speak. After that there were family members calling me saying, ‘don’t support her, don’t give her anything because she is doing drugs and she hurt her mom"
"We were more emotionally stable when we had the community spirit. That community spirit because of migration and all is no longer there. So, this trauma that happened to this young girl, had it been 20 years ago, we would not have been looking at mental health interventions. There were aunts, grandmothers and others in the extended family who would have stepped in, but these people aren’t there anymore"
"A lot of young people in Zimbabwe right now are doing drugs because of the state of the nation, the joblessness, the hopelessness, so people end up taking them to try pacify the emotions, to try pacify the dreams, to try pacify what they are going through, others turn to religion, others turn to alcohol and drugs"
"And this thing about drugs is a big problem that will drive crime, prostitution rates to go up, the Zimbabwe as we know it is going to change because of these drugs"
"It isn’t a problem that we can sweep under the carpet, not at all. The problem with drug-related crimes is that it is very violent. It is actually something that requires the government and Zimbabweans to get involved, before it becomes a major problem. Poverty is also driving people to sell drugs and the war against it will be tougher"
"We are losing a whole generation to drugs and these people will turn into criminals and Zimbabwe won’t be safe. In a few years it will be unsafe to be in Zimbabwe. We can’t sit around and look at this unfolding like a story. We are the generation that had the opportunity and it is up to us to help these ones who we left behind who have nothing"
"Zimbabweans are just a broken people; we have become an individualistic society like the first world. So, they replaced those things that we had in our culture, as ubuntu, with professional bodies. What we do as mental health is what we would have done with our grandmother’s aunts and uncles"
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.