Airplane Mode Quotes

“In 'Why Loiter?: Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets,' Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade write about how a woman's right to loiter is a crucial building block for an equitable city. Another useful word--loitering. So close to littering and its suggestion of something that shouldn't be there. Loitering also brings to mind the lottery and the gamble of waiting for something to happen. The authors describe loitering as an act of pleasure-seeking that holds multiple delicious possibilities: expanding women's access to public space; transforming women's relationship with the city; reenvisioning citizenship in more inclusive terms.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“I don't know if this should be considered a hobby or a disorder, but going for a walk is my idea of a marvelous time.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“Perhaps this is the underlying premise of luxury—to not see other people’s needs.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“There are always good arguments for doing new things, and, having made them all to myself, I am now beginning to see the case for doing only the things you are genuinely curious about.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“If we were being absolutely honest , wouldn't we just call [the Third World] the exploited world?”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“We had such different ideas of danger. I have spent all my life trying not to be attacked. This sounds melodramatic if you are not a woman. But for women, the danger of wilderness is not just about encountering wild animals or slipping and falling into the rapids; it is also the danger posed by men...The specter of violence follows women everywhere, and it follows us into the great outdoors.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“At the heart of conventional conservation is the model of the American national park. The Indian environmentalist Madhav Gadgil writes of the influence of the top-down strategy modeled on Yosemite National Park, whose establishment in 1890 followed the forcible expulsion of the Native Americans who lived there. The history of "America's best idea" goes hand in hand with the history of white supremacy over nature and the Indigenous people of North America.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“From cotton in the American South to sugar in Barbados to tea in India to rubber in Malaysia, the profits from the plantation agricultural complex undergirded European economies during the Industrial Revolution. One could call this trade, but given the inequality built into the relationship between the two parties, historians from colonized countries have identified it more accurately as plunder. Plantation agriculture also provided a template for a sophisticated economic operation in which output is maximized through low wages, division of labor, and repetitive tasks. It anticipated the assembly-line factory system. Thus, colonialism not only helped fund capitalism but also provided a production model.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“Of course they were playing. The fun of it made me smile. Imagine what a daredevil racecourse the waterfall must be if you are a bird. What a pleasure it must be to feel the water course over your tiny body. What a joy to test its power and weight against your tiny bird bones. What a joy to be inside a tiny body feeling the cold, the wetness, the heaviness, the light. I had always thought of curiosity as a human impulse, but it was, in fact, an animal impulse.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

“We rarely hear about the first Asian to reach Europe or the first African to reach the Americas. But the first European to reach China and the first European to reach India by sea and the first European to reach the Americas? Their names are household names, not because this is a major achievement, but because of the European investment i the idea of the first European to reach these "other" places.”
― Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel