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31c9d7a
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For isn't that what our homes are ultimately, our fantasies made corporeal, our secret selves exposed? The converse is also true: we grow to become that which we live within.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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da62030
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In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess's glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti--no fancy modern clothes for him. That's one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.
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india
literary-fiction
mystery
novel
suspense
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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758f731
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All of us groping in caverns, our fingertips raw against stone, searching for that slight crack, the edge of a door opening into love.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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fb43a76
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Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.
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family-relationships
india
immigrant-experience
literary-fiction
usa
suspense
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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ca49c4b
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Most of all, I understood that things happen to us for many complicated reasons, arising from both the past and the future.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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0cc175a
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Who am I to say that small joys are less valuable than a passion which shatters your life?
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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06373ff
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If you want to stand up against wrongdoing, if you want to bring about change, do it in a way that doesn't bruise a man's pride. You'll have a better chance of success.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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b5b26b6
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He never wasted time, Ram, especially on things he believed he couldn't change.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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fad4c35
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Just as you've deceived me, so will your mind deceive you. When you need the Brahmastra the most, you'll forget the mantra needed to call it up.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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c606405
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And this is one of the final things I learn about love: it's found in its purest form, on this imperfect earth, between mothers and young children, because there's nothing they want except to make each other happy.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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d18b5ad
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Like many Indian children, I grew up on the vast, varied, and fascinating tales of the Mahabharat.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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1480233
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Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. I
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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d21f689
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Some things can't be spoken. The body alone knows them. It holds them patiently, in its silent, intelligent cells, until you are ready to see.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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2b8a1c6
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That's how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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f46cb9b
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Motherhood taught me something new about love. It was the one relationship where you gave everything you had and then wished you had more to give.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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0d4366c
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And the mother, who through all the years of her hardship had never shed a tear, wept at his trust and her deception.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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81211b2
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Isn't that what truth is? The force of a person's believing seeps into those around him- into the very earth and air and water- until there's nothing else.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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6e0d0f9
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Forgive me, Sister, I said silently, you who are the unsung heroine of this tale, the one who has the tougher role: to wait and to worry.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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f52f309
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I learned a new fact about love that day: it could kill. Sometimes it could kill instantaneously.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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1c3c693
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it's not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we're willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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b334b96
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Such is the ancient law of the universe. Of karma and its fruit. The idea of motive is irrelevant to it.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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77bd91f
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The laws of karma were complicated, and ultimately, one never escaped them.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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293f2b6
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Did you ever think how monotonous your life would be if you could see all that was coming to you?
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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166c5d0
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Behold, we give you this girl, a gift beyond what you asked for. Take good care of her, for she will change the course of history.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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0ddac13
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A volte mi chiedo se la realta esiste davvero, se c'e varamente una natura delle cose, obiettiva e intatta. O se tutto cio che ci accade e gia modificato in anticipo dalla nostra immaginazione. Se sognando qualcosa gli diamo vita.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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7e7f3ca
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Todas las historias tienen muchas versiones distintas. La version elegida nos revela mas acerca del narrador que acerca de la historia.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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af38416
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Promises only lead to trouble.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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a3ff6c4
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Perhaps the smell of the balm had put me in a trance, for as I moved my hands back and forth, I thought I saw hanging in the night sky a great web, its glinting threads woven from our present nature and our past actions. Karna was caught in it, as was I. Others were enmeshed there, too: Kunti, my husbands, Bheeshma, even Duryodhan and Dussasan. If there was a way to escape the web, I couldn't see it. Our puny struggles only entangled us fur..
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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77c8d53
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Leela's happiest childhood memories were of aloneness: reading in her room with the door closed, playing chess on the computer, embarking on long bike rides through the city, going to the movies by herself. You saw more that way, she explained to her parents. You didn't miss crucial bits of dialogue because your companion was busy making inane remarks. Her parents, themselves solitary individuals, didn't object. People- except for a selecte..
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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385194f
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We are the keepers of the heart's dusty corners.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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b647cc4
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The grandfather dropped his weapons and knelt before him. On his face was a look I could only interpret as hope. "And have you come to set me free finally, Govinda?" he asked."
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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db69533
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She put on some music. Drum and flute, I think. She played it soft, because it was dreadfully late, a time when all good men and women, or at least the practical ones, had gone to bed. Then she danced for me.
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india
fiction
immigrant-experience
indian-authors
womens-fiction
mothers-and-daughters
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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17e5eaa
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Sarojini admits he has a point; girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women, and surely Bimal does a good job of that. But deep in a hidden place inside her that is stubborn as a mudfish, Sarojini knows she is right, too. Being loved a little more than necessary arms a girl in a different way.
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love
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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195d3ba
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She did understand about sacrificing values for the sake of love. It was a lesson all mothers had to memorize.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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e123882
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made to the other women when I joined them at night. The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don't get attached to them.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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19aaaa4
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The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don't get attached to them.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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d6f6886
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No, Ashok. Love is not a tap. It flows and flows like blood from a wound, and you can die of it.
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love
metaphoric
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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f3d99dc
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Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one that we have dreamed into being. We love people when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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85dd0ba
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What is it in us that carves negative impressions so deeply into our brains?
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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86ad967
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It felt as though someone had reached into him and was wresting out his heart. In later life his sorrows would be deep-drawn and bone-aching sad, but never like this. Perhaps only the young can feel such exquisitely intense pain.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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02b8fa2
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I long to stretch out on the sofa, wrapping myself in the red quilt that's lying there. Then, with a stab, I recognize the quilt. My father had brought it back from a business trip he took to New England long ago. Ironic, how objects remain in your life long after people have exited.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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d35fc91
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So many photos, so carefully preserved. How absurdly central I'd been to my mother's life.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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63b7e35
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After that, somehow, I began fixing things in my life. Dr Berger says being close to death will do that, but I'm not sure catalysts of change can be so easily identified.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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2633ea1
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I guess that's when people call their mothers - when their world is falling apart.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |