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0f41e05 he wanted to relive those confused days, that life of discovery, to be bound to those round tables and lectures and exams. There were things he had always meant to understand better [...] He wanted to read what he was told each evening, to do as he was told. There were great writers he had never read, would never read. His daughters would begin that journey soon enough, the world opening up for them in its entirety. Jhumpa Lahiri
b7894fe And yet she didn't want to kill herself. She loved the world too much, and people. She loved taking long walks in the late afternoon, and observing her surroundings. She loved the green of the sea, the light of dusk, the rocks scattered on the sand. She loved the taste of a red pear in autumn, the full, heavy winter moon that shone amid the clouds. She loved the warmth of her bed, a good book to read without being interrupted. To enjoy that.. Jhumpa Lahiri
512108c But no turbulent emotions passed through me as he spoke, only a diluted version of the nauseating sensation that had taken hold the day in Bombay that I learned my mother was dying, a sensation that had dropped anchor in me and never fully left. Jhumpa Lahiri
5f208b3 Dr. Grant was right, the feeling no longer swallows her. Bela lives on its periphery, she takes it in at a distance. The way her grandmother, sitting on a terrace in Tollygunge, used to spend her days overlooking a lowland, a pair of ponds. Jhumpa Lahiri
530054d Then again, how could he expect Bela to be interested in marriage, given the example he and Gauri had given? They were a family of solitaries. They had collided and dispersed. This was her legacy. If nothing else, she had inherited that impulse from them. Jhumpa Lahiri
bbe9e9c But even as she was going through with it she knew it was useless, just as it was useless to save a single earring when the other half of the pair was lost marriage Jhumpa Lahiri
d570f10 They were all like siblings, Mr. Kapasi thought as they passed a row of date trees. Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents. Jhumpa Lahiri
923e058 I start with very short pieces, usually no more than a handwritten page. I try to focus on something specific: a person, a moment, a place. I do what I ask my student to do when I teach creative writing. I explain to them that such fragments are the first steps to take before constructing a story. I think a writer should observe the real world before imagining a nonexistent one. Jhumpa Lahiri
af5a0e3 The blood of too many, dissolving the very stain. tragedy desensitized political-upheaval Jhumpa Lahiri
51eac0d He waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside. His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on the wall. Jhumpa Lahiri
0ba1eea She wished the days and months ahead of her would end. But the rest of her life continued to present itself, time ceaselessly proliferating. Jhumpa Lahiri
7f9f2d2 And so she felt antagonized by a man who did nothing to antagonize her, and by Bela, who did not even know the meaning of the word. But her worst nemesis resided within her. She was not only ashamed of her feelings but also frightened that the final task Udayan had left her with, the long task of raising Bela, was not bringing meaning to her life. In the beginning she'd told herself that it was like a thing misplaced: a favorite pen that wo.. Jhumpa Lahiri
737fb0b And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?" Jhumpa Lahiri
384c2d9 It usually sits on the night table, so that I can easily look up an unknown word while I'm reading. This book allows me to read other books, to open the door of a new language. It accompanies me, even now, when I go on vacation, on trips. It has become a necessity. If, when I leave, I forget to take it with me, I feel slightly uneasy, as if I'd forgotten my toothbrush or a change of socks. Jhumpa Lahiri
a18cf19 He was blind to self-constraints, like an animal incapable of perceiving certain colors. Jhumpa Lahiri
6bbed6a The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that a cover is a sort of translation, that is, an interpretation of my words in another language -- a visual one. It represents the text, but isn't part of it. It can't be too literal. It has to have its own take on the book. Like a translation, a cover can be faithful to at the book, or it can be misleading. In theory, like a translation, it should be in the service of the book, but this.. Jhumpa Lahiri
fe0ffd3 She knew that the word providence meant foresight, the future beheld before it was experienced. Jhumpa Lahiri
355b995 He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things, seated on newspapers on the living room floor. Instead of a knife she used a blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base. Jhumpa Lahiri
fe1f54e To Travel without moving an inch. Jhumpa Lahiri
6e78bae In my case there is another distance, another schism. I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to read it, or even write it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language, too. As Jhumpa Lahiri
5128c55 At the side of the house he scraped scales of fungus off the shingles. His basement smelled of mildew, his eyes stinging when he put in the laundry. The soil of his vegetable garden was too wet to till, the roots of the seedlings he'd planted washing away. The rhododendrons shed their purple petals too soon, the peonies barely opening before the stalks bent over, the blossoms smashed across the drenched ground. It was carnal, the smell of s.. Jhumpa Lahiri
709a637 I'm scared that the pencil sides might disappear, just as a drawing can be rubbed out by an eraser. Bengali will be taken away when my parents are no longer there. It's a language that they personify, that they embody. When they die, it will no longer be fundamental to my life. Jhumpa Lahiri
6d40ab7 It had ended bitterly; though at the time he could never come up with a reason not to, he could not bring himself to propose. She had not taken hold of him; he could see now that that was the problem. And so he left the tears and fury in Milan and took the train down to Rome. Jhumpa Lahiri
cca7e15 And she refused to go to that miserable place he had dragged her to so many times, to hope for a thing that was unchangeable. unchanging Jhumpa Lahiri
38e9b48 Like certain faces among the people I see on the street every day, certain words, for some reason, stand out, and leave an impression on me. Others remain in the background, negligible. After Jhumpa Lahiri
a4026ca A transformation, especially one that is deliberately sought, is often perceived as something disloyal, threatening. transformation Jhumpa Lahiri
5c1816b She was unprepared for the landscape to be so altered. For there to be no trace of that evening, forty autumns ago. Jhumpa Lahiri
526be8a He had forgotten the possibility of so many human beings in one space. The concentrated stench of so much life. He welcomed the sun on his skin, the absence of bitter cold. But it was winter in Calcutta. The people filling the platform, passengers and coolies, and vagrants for whom the station was merely a shelter, were bundled in woolen caps and shawls. Jhumpa Lahiri
73a4bc5 I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal....It was a way of getting close to different languages, of feeling connected to writers very distant from me in space and time. Jhumpa Lahiri
40590f2 He was proud to have come alone to America. To learn it, as he once must have learned to stand and walk and speak. He'd wanted so much to leave Calcutta, not only for the sake of his education but also--he could admit this to himself now--to take a step that Udayan never would. Jhumpa Lahiri
7f88837 Dissecting my linguistic metamorphosis, I realize that I'm trying to get away from something, to free myself. I've been writing in Italian for almost two years, and I feel that I've been transformed, almost reborn. Jhumpa Lahiri
f76ad95 Pet names are a persistent 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. Jhumpa Lahiri
7df70b6 He looks up at her, and behind her, at the sky, which holds more stars than he ever has seen at one time, crowded together, a mess of dust and gems. literature Jhumpa Lahiri
6f192ad 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." Jhumpa Lahiri
c849a97 Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. "Gogol," Jhumpa Lahiri
85a5b59 Assured by his grades and his apparent indifference to girls, his parents don't suspect Gogol of being, in his own fumbling way, an American teenager. Jhumpa Lahiri
0ef5c7d Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect. Jhumpa Lahiri
24f9047 That's what books are for, to travel without moving an inch. travel reading Jhumpa Lahiri
b02dfc3 She calculates the Indian time on her hands. The tip of her thumb strikes each rung of the brown ladders etched onto the backs of her fingers, then stops at the middle of the third: it is nine and a half hours ahead in Calcutta, already evening, half past eight. Jhumpa Lahiri
c89c09e T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid it. The heart of the craft lies there. writing Jhumpa Lahiri
1f2ea00 She speaks reverently of her summers here. This is her favorite place in the world, she tells him, and he understands that this landscape, the water of this particular lake in which she first learned to swim, is an essential part of her, even more so than the house in Chelsea. This was where she lost her virginity, she confesses, when she was fourteen years old, in a boathouse, with a boy whose family once summered here. He thinks of himsel.. Jhumpa Lahiri
621adb1 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. I Jhumpa Lahiri
0a2c14c Pet names are a persistent 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. They Jhumpa Lahiri
613611c No parent ever called a child by his good name. Good names had no place within a family. Jhumpa Lahiri
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