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The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

Bharati Mukherjee

[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Agendas Exotic Writing
I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta:
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Father Home Writing
A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Farmers Farming Modesty
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
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Mother Taken Winning
What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Children Mind Poetry
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
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Inattention India Real
What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Duty Inspire Teacher Teaching
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
But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Believe Mean Real
Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Back Caste Class Home Selected Studying
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
In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Battles Criticisms Mother Overall Toppel
She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Probably Runs Unvoiced Young
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

The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

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The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

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