Prologue

“But I like the inconveniences.” 
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.” 
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” 
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.” 
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.” 
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” 
There was a long silence. 
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last. 

~ Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

These are the words that left an indelible mark in me when I started my literature education about ten years ago. How morbidly empowering it is to be able to claim "the right to be unhappy". In a society obsessed with utilitarian goodness, the individual is often left to fend for his own rights. Rights of minorities often become a negligible factor in the grand design of things. This quote is a reminder to myself, to resist the wave of conformism. To not let status quo and the larger power structures dictate the will of the tiny and feeble. I don't know what I'm going to do, or in this case, I don't know what I'm going to write about, I only know that I can contribute in tiny ways to a more diverse, critical and alternative sociopolitical discourse. That would be my attempt at affecting change.