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1 " The divorced Indian lady combines every fantasy about the liberated, wicked Western woman with the safety net of basic submissive familiarity. "
― Bharati Mukherjee , Desirable Daughters
2 " Rebellion sounded like a lot of fun, but in Calcutta there was nothing to rebel against. Where would it get you? "
3 " The world is divided between those who stay and those who leave. "
― Bharati Mukherjee , Jasmine
4 " One time you mentioned the loneliness inside of marriage and I did not understand what you were saying. Two people are together; they have come from the same place; they share the same values, the same language. Practically speaking, they are the two halves of one consciousness. They eat the same food; they have a child; they sleep in the same bed, how can they be lonely. "
5 " How could we have allowed the instinct bred within us over the centuries to draw lines and never cross them, an infinity of lines, ever-smaller lines, ever-sharper distinctions? I grieved for Didi's generation of "girls of good family," who put caste, duty and family reputation before self-indulgence. "
6 " For girls of our class, only a convent-school education would do. This meant that until we reached the age of marital consent, we could be certified (of course) as virgins, but also as never having occupied unchaperoned confined space of any kind with a boy of our own age who was not a close relative. "
7 " Where, in Heaven's name, could anyone even be alone in Calcutta? What hanky-panky business, in my mother's words, could go on? Everyone knew the rules and the rules stated caste and community narrowed the range of intimate contact. "
8 " Humor's the hardest thing to translate. "
― Bharati Mukherjee
9 " It's making life important, making a single life important, rather than having a prescription for the global ills which afflict us. "
10 " Love on the decline is hard to tell from love on the rise.” [From 'The Lady from Lucknow'] "
― Bharati Mukherjee , Darkness
11 " Watch me re-position the stars. "
12 " His interest in India was too acquisitive; he felt he owned it by dint of his own efforts and suffering, and that partial ownership conferred upon him a benevolent proprietorship. Like certain missionaries who combined selflessness and spiritual arrogance, Hedges found himself dissatisfied with both sides, neither of which manifested the pure essence of their cultural selves. The Indians, especially the “Zentoos,” meaning Hindus, were already losing their integrity. "
― Bharati Mukherjee , The Holder of the World
13 " He understood something about firangi arrogance, which enabled even flawed, pathetic little men like Tringham to dream of plundering lands they did not know, and did not hate. They really didn’t think that laws applied to them. They tried to walk the world like gods, without armies or servants or gold to protect them, and without the principle of vengeance to ennoble them. "
14 " English attitudes saw Islam as a shallow kind of sophistication; Hinduism a profound form of primitivism. "
15 " But only men destroy and give back nothing. "
16 " In India, it takes a classic apprentice five years to learn how to sit at the sitar before he’s allowed to play a note. It’s not just the reaction that says How dare you know? It’s something deeper: How dare you presume to say you know? "
17 " She finally accepted how inappropriate it was in India—how fatal—to cling. "
18 " The survivor is the one who improvises, not follows, the rules. "
19 " She saw that her native New World forgetfulness would be forever in conflict with Old World blood-memory. "
20 " Deccani Hill Fort, Devgad, says the guidebook. Vandals and colonials have gouged the jewels from mosaic work: Victorian Englishmen whitewashed the murals, then plastered them over. "
― Bharati Mukherjee , The Middleman and Other Stories
