First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Being a lifelong poetry reader, I know there are many more published poems about death than any other subject."
"As I’ve collected the poems, prose pieces and quotes for This is Farewell, I’ve come to understand how they help us to articulate the unspeakable, unthinkable reality. The death of a loved person. Our own inevitable death."
"We know we are going to die. We know that every person now alive will one day die. It is one of the great paradoxes of being human, that, armed with this awareness of our own mortality, we continue to behave as it will not happen."
"Mother Suzanne Aubert, founder of the Sisters of Compassion, gives us comfort in her practical wisdom: “Following the miracle of our birth, the only sure thing is our death when our life is complete. Though awesome, it is not to be unduly feared… We do not fall suddenly into death, we advance towards it step by step every day. Our last hour is not death by itself but it consummates it."
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.