If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai Quotes

“There are two words you won’t find in Europe: “mercy” and “free”.”
― Srinath Perur, If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India

“Had our tour group sat down to draw up a manifesto, it might have gone something like this. We the young, urban, middle class tend to lead a rushed life working for corporates that care more for their bottom-lines than for their employees or the environment. As stressed, unfulfilled, moneyed individuals we then seek satiety in consumption, a treadmill which, besides drawing us further into the same trap, is environmentally unsustainable and has far-reaching consequences. If we would only be willing to to lead a slower, simpler life, we might not have all the shiny stuff, but our work might be better aligned with our talents and dispositions, and we would have opportunity and time to introspect, explore, and lead more fulfilling lives. Everyone would then be growing according their own genius.”
― Srinath Perur, If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India

“I hope there’s more in it for the woman rolling on the ground, outstretched hands joined in supplication, struggling to finish a lap of the considerable temple perimeter. A grim matronly figure, either mother or mother-in-law I surmise, gives her a hefty shove now and then as if she were a gas cylinder.”
― Srinath Perur, If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India

“I ask one of the southern contingent how he liked the food, and he beams: ‘As long as there is curd all food is good only.”
― Srinath Perur, If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India

“By then I’d played with a couple of college bands, doing clumsy covers ofrock staples. There were other bands that would produce note-perfect imitationsof songs by Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd and drive audiences wild. If a bandcould play something exactly as it was on tape, the consensus was that they mustbe good. But after a period of proving themselves this way, most bands became alittle more ambitious, and a day would come when they’d go up on stage duringa college festival and introduce a song with the dreaded words, ‘This is anoriginal composition.’ Almost always, these originals were listless pastiches ofthe covers the band played, the lyrics apparently not about anything at all. Thesewere skilled musicians, but their chosen form seemed to preclude any realengagement with their own lives or the lives of their audience. This was mostevident in the Death Metal bands, where you might have a good Hindu boygrowling menacingly about his affinity for Satan. This was a cargo-cult, amimicking of someone else’s rebellion.”
― Srinath Perur, If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai: A Conducted Tour of India