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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Thrity Umrigar

Until she went with him to India the first time after they were married. Then it all made sense, and she realized that the hospitality he displayed to all guests was larger than he was – it was cultural, hereditary, something coded into his DNA.

culture, india, intercultural

You felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you’re in a beautiful place and the sun is going down

melancholy, sad, sorrow

Think of how far you’ve come,” Maggie said softly. “And then ask yourself how much farther you wish to go

None of it made any sense to her – the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one’s parents or a move to a different city.

India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody’s wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone’s life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination.

First time since I come to Am’rica, I not with husband or Rekha or in restaurant or store or car or apartment. I’s all alone and I loves it. First time I feel everything not borrow. What I mean by that? When I with the husband, I seeing everything through his eyes – moon, sun, sky, tree, parking lot, store, everything. If he feeling sun too hot, I feeling upset. If he cursing the cold, I angry with snow. My brains not thinking my own thoughts.

independence, marriage, women

All the tears shed in the world, where do they go? she wondered. If one could capture all of them, they could water the parched, drought-stricken fields in Gopal’s village and beyond. Then perhaps these tears would have value and all this grief would have some meaning. Otherwise, it was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss

life, thinking-quotes

This solidarity business I used to talk about ain’t just–what do you youngsters call it?–theoretical. It means putting your body, your physical self, on the line, baby girl. Even when–especially when–it ain’t convenient.

diversity, racism, risk

Or perhaps is is that time doesn’t heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones – the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile – has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.

Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened.

life-and-living

I am not ascare to die. I am only ascare that after death I be alone. Maybe because of suicide, I go to the hell? If hell all hot and crowded and noiseful, like Christian minister on TV say, then I not care because it will be just like India. But if hell cold and quiet, with lot of snow and leaf-empty trees, and people who smile with string-thin lips, then I ascare. Because it seems so much like my life in Am’rica.

death, depression, hopelessness, housewife, life, life-in-america, life-in-india, loneliness, suicide

Why worry, if today be sweet’?