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Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.

Bharati Mukherjee

I am aware of myself as a four-hundred-year-old woman, born in the captivity of a colonial, pre-industrial oral culture and living now as a contemporary New Yorker.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Captivity Four Years
Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Growing Running School Up
A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Farmers Farming Modesty
I’m sorry, this is too much work, I’m going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.’
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Better Pay Sorry Work
You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Cities Country Iowa
You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted… I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Moment Needed School Taking
What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Children Mind Poetry
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Citizens Government Mean
My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it’s just continuous overload.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Definitions Littles Madness
I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Couple Growing Notebook Up
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Childhood Mother Two
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Inattention India Real
I’m very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don’t really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It’s about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Energy Father Soul
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Mother Taken Winning
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Daughter Father Mother
Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Individuality Mind Roots

Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.

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Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.

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