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April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"It is a summer of songs composed in blood, tuned with guns and arranged in conversations. It is a summer of songs I sing in swelling volumes."
"I write poetry from my personal space, in my personal voice. I say “I am here”. I address women in the world."
"I first encountered your 2019 debut collection Agringada: Like a Gringa, Like a Foreigner (Modjaji Books) at the Rosebank branch of Exclusive Books. I spent so much time trying to read the two words on the cover, the ones in a small black font. After numerous failed attempts I decided I would use my magnifying glass when I got back home. It was in that moment that I realised: Oh, they are using the very cover to give me the visceral experience of what I am about to read! Then I thought: Effective! Smart! I love it! I am buying this book!"
"I was still in the queue at the bookshop when I read the contents page, and I began to smile, because Tongues of their Mothers—my second poetry collection—is also divided into four sections using the names of seasons. In your book, there are eleven poems in Winter, fifteen in Summer, three in Spring and thirteen in Autumn."
"These hands have Moulded monuments, created crafts, healed hearts."
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.