I LOVE Divakaruni’s books!
I came across one of her books at a Florence bookshop when I’d run out of reading material during our around the world trip in 2007. It was Queen of Dreams. I hadn’t heard about the book or the author at the time. My decision was based purely on intuition and it turned out to be an awesome read. I remember reading Queen of Dreams in a backyard garden of the villa where we stayed in Siena while my husband went out to take more photos around this Medieval town. Since then, I read several of her books and even named one of my dishes after one. Sister of My Heart, that is. And, Mrs Divakaruni knows about it. Here’s my favourite bits and pieces from One Amazing Thing:
She ignored Uma superbly, as people do when faced with those whose abject destinies they control.
Uma sat. What else could she do? But she resolved to keep an eye on the woman, who looked entirely capable of shuffling the visa applications around out of bored caprice when no one was watching.
Farah. She had entered Tariq’s life innocuously, the way a letter opener slides under the flap of an envelope, cutting through things that had been glued shut, spilling secret contents.
She needed to see what made America America. But she had asked if they could go to the Museum of Modern Art. What a waste of an afternoon that had been. He had trailed behind her as she examined, with excruciating interest, canvases filled with incomprehensive slashes of color or people who were naked, and ugly besides.
His defenses eroded by fever, he was caught in the inflection of her voice. Something ancient in it reached out and reclaimed him.
Cameron, who had been reading up on India in preparation for his trip, understood that she felt embarrassed. It was ironic; the sweatshirt covered far more of her body than the midriff-baring blouse and thin sari had. But the ways in which cultural habits operated were mysterious.
The pain in her wrist was still there, but like a nagging old relative to whose complaints she had grown accustomed.
Instead, she thought about Beethoven. When deafness began to descend on him, it must have been like being buried under auditory darkness.
Right now, his brain was a file cabinet where he had shut all the drawers except one.
People you had once loved knew the best ways to hurt you.
Relationships aren’t businesses that can be made healthy by pouring money into them.
“I don’t believe anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.”
But her father had taken Jiang’s side, the way he had ever since her mother had died when Jiang was five, leading her grandmother to lament that he was nothing but a soggy noodle in his daughter’s hands.
I FELL IN LOVE, OF COURSE,” JIANG SAID. “WHAT IS FORBIDDEN is attractive. Also what is different. Also, when it is the first time. Put all of them together, they make strong wine.
When I told him I loved Mohit, he said, Can fish love birds?
Only fools chewed the cud of the past.
Mangalam tried the office lines, but only half his mind registered that they were still dead. With the other half of his mind he was thinking about the passion with which the young Jiang had loved Mohit, a passion frozen into foreverness by the destiny that separated them.
Love, when alive, is a garland, he thought. When dead, it’s a garotte.
Jiang’s matter-of-fact voice, speaking of love crumpled up and thrown away like a letter with too many mistakes in it, of families blown like spores across the desert of the world, had calmed her and made her remember something that she needed to check on.
We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel—and suddenly it is an axe, breaking us into pieces from the inside.
Did one always take for granted what came easily and long for what was impossible?
But teachers were meagerly paid and resembled chewed-up sticks of sugarcane, and I had no desire to become one.
NONE OF US SAW NIRMALA AGAIN, THOUGH BITS OF HER STORY blew back to us on the winds of rumor.
From having put up my story against the others, I can see this much: everyone suffers in different ways. Now I don’t feel so alone.
Most important, during all those years when we thought I wasn’t good at anything, they hadn’t nagged me about it. (For Asian parents, that’s as close to sainthood as you can get.)
Since the bathroom door could no longer be pushed shut, people would have to wait outside Mangalam’s office to allow the user privacy.
couldn’t help noting how different Latika was from Naina. She was no beauty, but in her simple sari and minimal makeup she exuded a glow. If Naina was a flashing disco light, Latika was the moon in a misty sky.
Until he returns in the evening, the day lies ahead of her, luxurious as a stretching cat waiting for her to stroke it.
Moving to live where no one knew you, shucking off your worn-out life like old snakeskin! The idea ran through me like a shiver.
“Stop blaming your husband,” she said. “And yourself. Accept. Forgive. A path will open.”
I don’t think going anywhere will help.” “Why not?” I asked angrily. “You’ll still be carrying yourself. Even into another lifetime, you’ll carry your old, tortured self.” Was it my imagination, or did her fingertips turn chilly as she spoke? “Remain where you are and work on your heart. Once you’re dead, it’s much more difficult.”
Remember, if you change inside, outer change will follow.
This is why I was so excited about going to India: Once I got there, I planned to leave Mr. Pritchett. I planned to dive into that roiling ocean of one billion people, all our karmas fitting together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and begin anew.
Cameron had never heard that song before; it would go deep into him, lodging like a guinea worm, emerging whenever it wanted to.
To have been extended those minutes of hope only to have them snatched away was the cruelest cosmic joke, the final insult.
Within the boundaries prescribed by the culture of their birth, they had expressed affection, kissing in the morning when they left for work, putting their arms around each other in photographs, admiring a new outfit, sitting close on the couch as they listened to Rabindra Sangeet
Something had happened as I lay in the field, watching the sky, an understanding that I couldn’t control the lives of others—but neither could they control mine.
The status quo thus restored, he hung up with relief.
But things were not the same. The relationship between my parents and me had shifted. I was driving, seeing them in my rearview mirror: smaller, shrunken; my mother trustingly oblivious of the fragility of the relationship on which she had based her life; my father without the courage to follow through on what he had—selfishly, illicitly, but truly—desired. Later I would forgive, but for now, I pulled away from them. Perhaps this distancing would have happened anyway, in time. But I felt rushed into it, as though I had yanked off a scab before the wound was healed, leaving behind a throbbing pink spot, the slow blood oozing again. And when I entered relationships of my own, I was careful to withhold the deep core of my being, the place in my mother that would have shattered if she had learned of my father’s betrayal.
I didn’t realize—until this earthquake, until today—that my withholding was a worse kind of betrayal, a betrayal of the self. It was time for me to change.
As they waited to see what would happen next, Uma began the end of her story.
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