Quote by Manjula Padmanabhan: “To be invisible is to not exist. And yet, here I am.”

Society often renders certain people — women, minorities, the poor — invisible by ignoring or dismissing them. This quote asserts existence against that erasure. The speaker acknowledges the social death of invisibility while simultaneously refusing it: I am here whether or not you choose to see me. Presence is not contingent on being seen.

Padmanabhan was writing in the context of India's rapidly accelerating economic and technological development in the 2000s, a period that brought new visibility to some Indians while marginalizing others further. Her fiction often imagined extreme futures to interrogate present inequalities of gender and class.

Indian author, playwright, and illustrator, born in New Delhi in 1953. Her play Harvest won the Onassis Prize for Theatre in 1997, and her work consistently explores gender, technology, and power in near-future India. She is also known for her Suki comic strip and science fiction novel Escape.