Quotes About Belonging

For as grateful as she feels for the company of the Nandis and Dr. Gupta, these acquaintances are only substitutes for the people who really ought to be surrounding them. Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby's birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true.

We live here now, she was born here." She seemed genuinely proud of the fact, as if it were a reflection of my character. In her estimation, I knew, I was assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity. I would never have to eat rationed food, or obey curfews, or watch riots from my rooftop, or hide neighbors in water tanks to prevent them from being shot, as she and my father had.

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

For Gogol Ganguli- The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name.

He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he'd landed and made his life, was not his

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.

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

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.

Chi non appartiene a nessun posto specifico non puè tornare, in realtà, da nessuna parte. I concetti di esilio e di ritorno implicano un punto di origine, una patria. Senza una patria e senza una vera lingua madre, io vago per il mondo, anche dalla mia scrivania. Alla fine mi accorgo che non è stato un vero esilio, tutt'altro. Sono esiliata perfino dalla definizione di esilio.

Ela tem o dom de aceitar a própria vida; conhecendo-a melhor, ele se dá conta de que ela nunca desejou ser outra pessoa a não ser ela mesma, nem ter sido criada em outro lugar, de algum outro jeito.

A cena faz Moushumi chorar. Ao mesmo tempo, ela fica contente de ter uma coisa tangível com a qual se aborrecer.

Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere.

Als je zonder je eigen taal leeft, voel je je gewichtloos en tegelijkertijd overbeladen. Je ademt een andere lucht in, op een andere hoogte. Je bent je altijd bewust van het verschil.

Mi aspetta un luogo in cui conta solo l'italiano. Un riparo da cui si sprigiona una nuova realtà.

Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist. Yet the thought of this eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no solace at all.

Wanneer je als mens sterk geworteld bent, zoals mijn ouders dat waren, kan migratie werken als een zaag en een levenslang trauma veroorzaken. Ik ben meer als de waterplanten in het moerasland, het lowland dat ik in mijn boek beschrijf. Mijn wortels hebben geleerd in het water te dwarrelen, beweeglijk te zijn. Migratie betekent voor mij geen ontworteling meer.

Gogol and Sonia] call up their American friends, who are happy enough to see them but ask them nothing about where they've been. And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.

But it was another to be authoritative; Bengali had never been a language in which she felt like an adult.

How is it possible to feel exiled from a language that isn't mine? That I don't know? Maybe because I'm a writer who doesn't belong completely to any language.

In American, when I was young, my parents always seemed to be in mourning for something. Now I understand: it must have been the language.

When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive.

Belonging to another man and therefore not even a little bit to him.

I became a writer in America, but I set my first stories in Calcutta, a city where I have never lived, far from the country where I grew up, and which I knew much better. Why? Because I needed distance between me and the creative space.

When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.