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4c3cf9a
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That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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00695a9
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Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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697ba19
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You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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9fad923
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They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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2ed8923
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Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.
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inspirational
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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1f53818
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Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f542932
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Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.
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inspirational
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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2f655ed
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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fd209fa
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He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and I quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself I like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera.
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photography
youth
pictures
photos
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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97e29a6
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While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appear..
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moon
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e377804
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She has the gift of accepting her life.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e538095
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Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.
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life
inspirational
mottos
advice
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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41a93ce
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My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch."
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travel
opportunity
books
jhumpa-lahiri
the-namesake
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f1e4fc3
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Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated ..
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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7abf37a
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Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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1a9271f
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Sexy means loving someone you do not know.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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04eb38d
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One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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5a06fe1
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship
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isolation
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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d87b3b9
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And wasn't it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn't it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one's life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person...that solitude was what one relished the most, the only thing that, even in fleeting, diminished doses, k..
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f6d811e
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In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.
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unknown
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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7fe1ef1
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There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
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mother
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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5cdb4be
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And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f9657f1
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Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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cd9fbad
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Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that weren't the case. This was the working of the will. This was what gave the world purpose and direction. Not what was there but what was not.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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ac89320
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Do what I will never do.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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af28ee2
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She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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092d61b
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In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another...They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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9e248b7
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And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she'd worn, the insecurity she'd felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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a218f88
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But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.
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jhumpa-lahiri
the-namesake
americans
privacy
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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5e45643
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The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.
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imperfection
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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2a8d0c2
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That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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d806015
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With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.
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distancing-self
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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5aa9eb4
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Will you remember this day, Gogol?" his father had asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head. "How long do I have to remember it?" Over the rise and fall of the wind, he could hear his father's laughter. He was standing there, waiting for Gogol to catch up, putting out a hand as Gogol drew near. "Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol reached him, leading him slowly back across th..
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remember
journey
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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0d1a05d
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When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the life, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds. When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. Your breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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52e02df
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On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.
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food
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e2c04d6
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Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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19bf3b6
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With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before
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motherhood
parenting
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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91a1499
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Is that what you think of when you think of me?" Gogol asks him. "Do I remind you of that night"? "Not at all", his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. "You remind me of everything that followed." --
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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60edcd0
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War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war,
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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c792c66
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She supposed that all those years of loving a person who was dishonest had taught her a few things.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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4006b90
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She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.
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heart
lovemaking
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f9bcc3b
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Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.
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creative
inspiration
imagination
imperfect
imperfection
creativity
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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b1b4ea5
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Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it, and then I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada's family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, but I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should..
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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34895db
|
Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |