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1 " Because in the game of life, there are two teams: adults and children.Sometimes, the children win. "
― Mathangi Subramanian , A People's History of Heaven
2 " How can she explain to these children, whom she would never begrudge a blossom or two, that in the game of life there are two teams: rich and poor? That she and these children are on one team, and Padma is on the other. "
3 " As if the lock that binds us is the one that sets Anand free.Locks are funny like that. "
4 " Bravery, she thinks, belongs to girls. But freedom belongs to boys. "
5 " Padma watches the children who are her age but nothing like her. Who seem both older and younger than her, wiser and more naive. Who seem to come from another galaxy, another world. A constellation of privilege. "
6 " It’s not that I don’t want to be part of something bigger,” Rukshana says to no one in particular. “It’s that I want to be myself first. "
7 " She thought she would miss it. The power, the possibilities. The bending of time. But here, in this chaos of sisters and mothers and brothers, of families lost and found. Here, in this glorious present, she doesn't miss a thing. "
8 " Bit by bit, piece by piece, the warehouses stopped being warehouses and started being mandapams: wedding halls for the not-so-rich, the never-will-be-famous. "
9 " You don’t have to light a match to burn a family’s life to the ground. "
10 " It’s enough to make you believe that all those enormous stone Kalis aren’t enough to hold the fury lying dormant in a single woman’s heart. "
11 " Early on, we girls learn that life owes us nothing, that womanhood is a spectrum of nuisances, heartbreaks and tragedies. "
12 " They'll tell you secrets keep you safe. They're wrong. Nothing safe ever needs to be hidden. Nothing hidden is every truly safe. "
13 " This is what it sounds like to break the sky. "
14 " So what you’re saying is,” Anand says, “that girls can be bought, but echoes can’t? "
15 " The sun slides down the sky, dragging the heat with it. Timid breezes poke their heads up from the depths of Bangalore's dying lakes, pawing at the air and puffing at the sparse remains of clouds. Dulling the edges of the unforgiving day. "
16 " She learns to ask. To want. To hope. Learns the feeling of responding to a hunger that lives, not in her belly, but somewhere else in her body. "
