In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.
BHARATI MUKHERJEEIn traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.
More Bharati Mukherjee Quotes
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My first novel, ‘The Tiger’s Daughter,’ embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
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 -
A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It’s a question of time, not motive.
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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 -
I’m sorry, this is too much work, I’m going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.’
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
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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.
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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.
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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 -
There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn’t regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn’t conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.
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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:
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Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
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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.
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I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn’t enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can’t feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE