Quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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?

When one has to leave behind almost everything, it hardly matters what one takes.

And if I wasn't able to bar anger, or her insidious cousin, irritation, From my heart, at least some of the time I bit back the sharp comments that I had prided myself on dispensing so freely all these years.

Perhaps we are always alone, from the time we leave the safety of our mothers' wombs until the time Waheguru gathers us to Himself.

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.

The goddess doesn't care how many minutes you spend in front of her," he said. "Only how much you want to be here.

If Jindan wants something badly enough, she can make it happen. She believes this completely.

Because a trained mind is your strongest ally—and an untrained one your worst enemy.

This was something I had achieved by myself, without having to depend on anyone. No one could take it away. That's what I want for you, my Tara, my Bela. That's what it really means to be a fortunate lamp.

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.

They say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. Their gaze is a rope of gold binding each to the other. Even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. They can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again.

A situation in itself," he said, "is neither happy nor unhappy. It's only your response to it that causes your sorrow. But

Love comes like lightning , and disappears the same way.. If you are lucky it strickes you right..

Love comes like lightning , and disappears the same way.. If you are lucky it strikes you right..

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?

When you begin to weave your own desires into your vision, the true seeing is taken from you.

Ah, love. Why had Vidhata made its nature so complex? Why did one love conflict, so often, with another?

What is it in us that carves negative impressions so deeply into our brains?

I heard the laments of the people of Hastinapur, their sorrow at losing us. But I no longer required their tears. It baffled me that as a younger women I'd thought that such a thing would make me happy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I guess that's when people call their mothers - when their world is falling apart.