" Winning the Padma Shri was never my goal. Helping people was."
"Wow, so that's the part you decided to address in what I said?" Every single time her mother showed her where Ashna fell on her list of priorities it hurt as though it were the first time. How could she be so weak?
Her mother sighed. "Don't you at least want to try to understand what my life's been like?"
"I do understand. I was there, remember? Watching from eight thousand miles away." Because you left me. Over and over again.
"I was forced into a marriage with your father."
Not this again. "Thanks for sharing that. After overhearing your fights my entire childhood, you think I didn't figure that out myself?" She had heard those words innumerable times. "You didn't want Baba, you didn't want me. I know. You got stuck with us, and you did what you had to do to make sure you didn't lose yourself, to break the chains, to find your voice. All the things. Now look, Padma Shri! Boom! It all worked out. I'm proud of you and everything, but I'm not the 'Economic Status of Rural Women.' You can't fix me by putting the right systems in place." It was a little late for that. "

― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)