Anita Rau Badami Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes it seemed as if the past was a painting that she had dipped in water, allowing the colours to run and drip, merge and fade so that an entirely altered landscape remained. — Anita Rau Badami

In most homes, from what I know of them, even though the woman's place in that particular home might be in the home, still, she is queen of her house. So I like exploring the many different incarnations of women in that country, actually. You find quite a range of these women in this book - each one of them embodies a completely different personality type. And how can you write a book that's only full of men, anyway? I mean, half the population of this world is women. — Anita Rau Badami

Such is the power of death -- to strip away breath and transform a person into an airy abstraction. — Anita Rau Badami

And as if he had read her thoughts, the old man murmured, 'What a blessing it is to die in your own bed, under your own roof, with your family surrounding you, full of the knowledge that you have lived as thoroughly as you wanted to. — Anita Rau Badami

It's something that exists on a daily basis on practically every street in India. You have people who are Hindus, Muslims, Christians - not just Catholics, but Protestants, you name it, all kinds of Christians - a hundred other religions, living side by side. And the kind of personal religion that people end up practicing is a bizarre concoction of ritual drawn from each other. So everybody ends up celebrating everyone else's festivals. — Anita Rau Badami

Especially in urban areas, nobody cares so much [about castes], because you are forced to live in the same buildings. There is so, so little space. You can't be thinking about whether you are living in a street that has only Brahmins, or in a building that has been touched only by Muslims or Christians. You just live there, because that's the only place that you can find. So such distinctions just crumble away. There are people who maintain them, at all costs. But for the most part, it doesn't matter. — Anita Rau Badami

I don't think anybody in the world is perfect. I don't think anybody is absolutely good or bad or stupid. Each one of us combines all those qualities in our daily lives, I think. — Anita Rau Badami

Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance. — Anita Rau Badami