Home > Work > The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1) QUOTES

The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1) QUOTES

1 " He deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

2 " People are more gullible and less compassionate than any of us want to believe. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

3 " I felt my spirits lift. I would leave the map of my life here, in Jaipur. I would leave behind a hundred thousand henna strikes. I would no longer call myself a henna artist but tell anyone who asked : I healed, I soothed. I made whole. I would leave behind the useless apologies for my disobedience. I would leave behind my yearning to rewrite my past. My skills, my eagerness to learn and my desire for a life I could call my own - these were things I would take with me. They were part of me the way my blood, my breath, my bones were "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

4 " Hadn't Gandi-ji said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

5 " Success was ephemeral—and fluid—as I’d found out the hard way. It came. It went. It changed you from the outside, but not from the inside. Inside, I was still the same girl who dreamed of a destiny greater than she was allowed. Did I really need the house to prove I had skill, talent, ambition, intelligence? What if— "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

6 " there were three kinds of karma: the accumulated karma from all our past lives; the karma we created in this life; and the karma we stored to ripen in our future lives. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

7 " Hadn’t Gandhi-ji said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind? "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

8 " At this moment, sitting in front of this good, sensible woman, I wanted the thing I hated most in this world. Sympathy. Even more, I hated that I wanted it. Hated myself for my weakness. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

9 " Before independence, these objects had signified my ladies’ admiration for the British. Now, they signified their scorn. My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

10 " Just then, my mother’s words echoed in my head: stretch your legs only as far as your bed. I was getting too far ahead of myself. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

11 " In India, individual shame did not exist. Humiliation spread, as easily as oil on wax paper, to the entire family, even to distant cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. The rumormongers made sure of that. Blame lay heavily in my chest. Had I not deserted my marriage, Radha would not have suffered so much, and Maa and Pitaji would not have been so powerless against an entire village. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

12 " Independence changed everything. Independence changed nothing. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

13 " My younger sister was lively and curious, which was good, but she was also untamed—and that could be a dangerous combination. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

14 " The one-eyed man is king among the blind,” I replied, smiling. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

15 " Samir Singh frequented the pleasure houses of Hazi and Nasreen whenever he had business in Agra. There, Muslim noblemen, Bengali businessmen and Hindu doctors and lawyers smoked hookahs, and ate and drank as the courtesans recited ancient poetry, sang sweet, nostalgic ghazals and performed "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

16 " Saasuji once told me there were three kinds of karma: the accumulated karma from all our past lives; the karma we created in this life; and the karma we stored to ripen in our future lives. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

17 " Maa was gentle, but firm. She was brought up to obey her parents and her husband, not to defy, question or contradict. She told me Pitaji’s books had filled my head with too many silly ideas. They had given me the useless notion that I could make my own decisions. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

18 " The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. —From the poem Journey Home by Rabindranath Tagore When the Goddess of Wealth comes to give you her blessing, you shouldn’t leave the room to wash your face. —Hindu Proverb "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

19 " stretch your legs only as far as your bed. I was getting too far ahead of myself. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)

20 " The poor weren’t the only ones imprisoned by their caste. "

― Alka Joshi , The Henna Artist (The Henna Artist, #1)