Naseeruddin Shah on Cinema, with Apoorvanand and Sunil Khilnani on the Youth of India

THE ONLY MAGIC that happens in this world happens on the stage. Films take you captive, they feed you everything on a plate, the legerdemain they create transports you into a state where you may as well be dreaming, but theatre takes you into a world where your imagination is stimulated, your judgement is unimpaired, and thus your enjoyment heightened.

Naseeruddin Shah, actor, in his autobiography And Then One Day

HOW UNFORTUNATE would be a nation which has only obedient, conformist minds as its youth-youth who fight only for placements with fat pay packets; who are ready to turn into cogs and wheels of the machinery, which turns profit for a few and crushes the rest of humanity.

Apoorvanand, professor of Hindi at the University of Delhi, in The Indian Express

IF YOU LOOK at recent history, the real crunch happens in societies which have fared well for a bit, and then plateaued out. If that society has a lot of young people and if you don't have institutional capacity or will to deal with their demands, you are in for social upheaval.

Sunil Khilnani, historian, author of the book The Idea of India, in an interview to the BBC