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a15fd24
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It's hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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04839c8
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Each word she'd set down in the journals was a gift and a wound.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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b5f92c3
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A wind rose around me, from where I didn't know. It was unexpectedly cold and made me shiver. 'Sacrifice, sacrifice', whispered the trees, carrying my promise across the valley
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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0e45dac
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Instead of consoling us, my mother spoke sternly. 'Pull yourselves together. Surely I've brought you up better than this? we come into the world alone, and we leave it alone. And in between, too, if it is destined, we'll be alone. Draw on your inner strength. Remember, you can be your own worst enemy - or your best friend. It's up to you. And also this: what you can't change, you must endure.' I knew it was mostly to me that she'd spoken. '..
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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c199f26
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I forgave you a long time ago,' I say to Ram. 'Though I didn't know it until now. Because this is the most important aspect of love, whose other face is compassion: It isn't doled out, drop by drop. It doesn't measure who is worthy and who isn't. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable. Astonishing. Measureless.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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b087976
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And that is why, O King Ram, I must reject your kind offer to allow me to prove my innocence again. Because this is one of those times when a woman must stand up and say, No more!
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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18783c9
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Around me celestial flowers are falling in a crystal shower. Or are they the tears of the gods who crowd the skies, looking down in sorrow and admiration at my final act of self-respect?
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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bdbed29
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The dream is a mirror showing me my beauty. I bless the dream. The dream is a mirror showing me my ugliness. I bless the dream.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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9a7698e
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Once I said to my mother, As long as there's fresh bread in this world, things can't be beyond repair.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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6a83190
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It is unfair that one person should suffer in order for others to be blessed. If the gods were powerful enough to shape our destinies, why couldn't they just send us a good fortune untainted by sorrow?
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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90371fb
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Write our story, too. For always we've been pushed into corners, trivialized, misunderstood, blamed, forgotten--or maligned and used as cautionary tales.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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5dce34e
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Love was full of contradictions. Sometimes the person you loved weakened you and sometimes he or she made you a stronger person.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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e042ffa
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Ram and Lakshman had joined their father, who had been housed in a separate palace, at the edge of the royal grounds because it was considered inauspicious for brides and grooms to meet in the days that preceded the wedding. I had to console myself with the fact that in a few days we'd belong to each other. We'd spend the rest of our lives together, and we wouldn't allow any of society's foolish dictates to separate us.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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66caffa
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What is more numerous than the grass? The thoughts that rise in the mind of man. Who is truly wealthy? That man to whom the agreeable and disagreeable, wealth and woe, past and future, are the same. What is the most wondrous thing on earth? Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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6fb47e8
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My first lesson on nature of love was that in a moment it could fulfill the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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df742ef
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So this, too, was true of love: it could make us forget our own needs. It could make us strong even when the world was collapsing around us.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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44a5eeb
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I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn't mean giving in. It didn't mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with them as intelligently as we knew until we grew stronger than them. That was what I'd work on.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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580b8fb
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I saw that this was how we would live out the next decades, dragging ourselves from one expected action to the next, hoping by meticulous duty to bring each other some small measure of happiness. But the comfort that duty offers is lukewarm at best. Happiness, like a mischievous bird that hops from branch to branch, would continue to elude us.
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happiness
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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2350a91
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This was my first lesson on the nature of love: that in a moment it could fulfil the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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07a77f0
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This is the nature of sorrow; often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it. (How well I knew this, for random events would startle me into the memory of a pair of ancient eyes.)
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sorrow
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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c3a2efe
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But some things can't be told that way, I know that now. They can only be approached stealthily, from behind, like wild birds. And even then they catch your scent and take flight before you throw your net of words over them.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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4a26214
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Watching them, I feel at once happy and lonely. It's not the loneliness of being without a mate, but something more primal. As though I were the only being left on this side of the glass, while the rest of the world--happy, uncaring--lived out its life on the other side.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |