None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget. So it is no more than coincidence that I happen to be here, on American soil, in September – this month of dreadful anniversaries. Uppermost on everybody’s mind of course, particularly here in America is the horror of what has come to be known as “9/11”. Three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage is still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children will blunt the edge of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
— Arundhati Roy
A renowned novelist and essayist from India