Umrigar Thrity Quotes & Sayings

I think distance also helps me gain an certain critical perspective that's essential for good writing. It makes it possible to be more truthful in my writing, to speak some harsh truths. And being an immigrant in America, always having this outsider-rinsider thing going on, is such great training for being a writer. Because that's what writers are - outsiders wanting to get on the inside and insiders longing to burst out. — Thrity Umrigar

He listen something in my voice because he look up immediately. His eyes as blue as July sky. His long yellow hair fall like sunshine on his forehead and my finger burn from not touching it. — Thrity Umrigar

She felt grief move within her like a barefoot woman flitting through a dark house. — Thrity Umrigar

We can't be responsible for other people's reactions to us, Lakshmi," she said. "We can only make sure our intentions are good. — Thrity Umrigar

The Forty Rules of Love is a wise, joyous page-turner ... and one that speaks urgently to our war-ravaged times. — Thrity Umrigar

None of it made any sense to her - the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one's parents or a move to a different city. — Thrity Umrigar

Mithai teach me big lesson
it easier to love someone if you can make them happy. — Thrity Umrigar

The docotr babu had to be an educated man also. Then why had he allowed Feroz seth to talk to him in that manner? Was education alone not enough? And if not what was the missing part?
Was it because Feroz seth knew how to look angry even when he wasn't? Would her Amit be able to do that? Was that something they taught you in school — Thrity Umrigar

Balloonwallas tried to seduce the children with their — Thrity Umrigar

Now the sun is wide awake, baring its teeth, making the sweat run down people's back. Before it will make its way across the sky and into the waiting arms of the Arabian Sea, so much will have happened: migrations into the city, births, marriages, dowry deaths, illicit love affairs, pay raises, first kisses, bankruptcy filings, traffic accidents, business deals, money changing hands, plant shutdowns, gallery openings, poetry readings, political discussions, evictions. Every event in human history will repeat itself today. Everything that ever happened will happen again today. All if life lived in a day. A day, a day. A silver urn of promise and hope. Another chance. At reinvention, at resurrection, at reincarnation. A day. The least and most of all of our lives. — Thrity Umrigar

She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure. — Thrity Umrigar

when they gazed at the sea, people held their heads up, and their faces became curious and open, as if they were searching for something that linked them to the sun and the stars, looking for that something they knew would linger long after the wind had erased their footprints in the dust. — Thrity Umrigar

All these tears shed in the world, where do they go? If one could capture all of them, they could water the parched. Then perhaps these tears would have value and all this grief would have some meaning. Otherwise, it was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss. — Thrity Umrigar

Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible. — Thrity Umrigar

I am not ascare to die. I am only ascare that after death I be alone. Maybe because of suicide, I go to the hell? If hell all hot and crowded and noiseful, like Christian minister on TV say, then I not care because it will be just like India. But if hell cold and quiet, with lot of snow and leaf-empty trees, and people who smile with string-thin lips, then I ascare. Because it seems so much like my life in Am'rica. — Thrity Umrigar

She is tired of it all - tired of this endless cycle of death and birth, tired of investing any hope in the next generation, tired and frightened of finding more human beings to love, knowing full well that every person she loves will someday wound her, hurt her, break her heart with their deceit, their treachery, their fallibility, their sheer humanity. — Thrity Umrigar

But her mind feels feverish as it races through the crowded hallways of the past — Thrity Umrigar

First time since I come to Am'rica, I not with husband or Rekha or in restaurant or store or car or apartment. I's all alone and I loves it. First time I feel everything not borrow. What I mean by that? When I with the husband, I seeing everything through his eyes - moon, sun, sky, tree, parking lot, store, everything. If he feeling sun too hot, I feeling upset. If he cursing the cold, I angry with snow. My brains not thinking my own thoughts. — Thrity Umrigar

Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs. — Thrity Umrigar

Why worry, if today be sweet'? — Thrity Umrigar

And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist. — Thrity Umrigar

Until she went with him to India the first time after they were married. Then it all made sense, and she realized that the hospitality he displayed to all guests was larger than he was - it was cultural, hereditary, something coded into his DNA. — Thrity Umrigar

How people's faces turned slightly upward when they stared at the sea, as if they were straining to see a trace of God or were hearing the silent humming of the universe; she would notice how, at the beach, people's faces became soft and wistful, reminding her of the expressions on the faces of the sweet old dogs that roamed the streets of Bombay. As if they were all sniffing the salty air for transcendence, for something that would allow them to escape the familiar prisons of their own skin. — Thrity Umrigar

How much good fortune had been strewn her way, starting with a man who still put up with her crankiness and irrationalities, who stayed loyal and devoted to her, as if she were the flag of his country. — Thrity Umrigar

You will learn, deekra. You never marry just a person. You always marry a family.
They walk in total silence. But this silence is screaming, screeching, and filled with sounds
the thudding of Bhima's heart; the clawing, tearing fear that is choking Maya's throat; ... Inside this silence the two women walk, afraid of touching its contours, because to break the dam of silence would mean to allow the waters of anger, rage, fury to come rushing, would allow the tidal wave of the recent past
the past that they have ignored, aborted, killed
to come roaring in to destroy their tenuous present. But quiet, like love, doesn't last forever. — Thrity Umrigar

This is love
not what we say to each other but what we not say. Sometime it just one look exchange. Sometime one word. But underlining everything we say or not say, something else. Something heavy and deep, like when we in bed and looking into each other's eyes. For six years, everything between husband and me was on top, like skin. Now it hidden, like bone and muscle. [ ... ] He care for me now. He finally see me. And he like what he see. — Thrity Umrigar

Four years into her marriage, Sera had woken up one morning to feel something hot and sticky in the back of her throat. For a minute, she thought it was the start of another sinus infection, but when she swallowed cautiously, her throat did not hurt. It was hate. Hate that was lodged like a bone in her throat. Hate that made her feel sick, that gave her mouth a bitter, dry taste. Hate that entered her heart like a fever, that made her lips curve downward like a bent spoon. — Thrity Umrigar

Resolutely ignoring Banu's dark mutterings, steeling herself against the barrage of harsh words that questioned her motives, her upbringing, and her morality — Thrity Umrigar

The generosity of the poor, Sera marveled to herself. It puts us middle-class people to shame. They should hate our guts, really. Instead, they treat us like royalty. The thought of how she herself treated Bhima - not allowing her to sit on the furniture, having her eat with separate utensils - filled her with guilt. Yet she knew that if she tried to change any of these rituals, Feroz would have a fit. — Thrity Umrigar

It was strange how she found out, One moment she didn't know; the next minute she did. One moment her mind was as blank as the desert; the next minute the snake of suspicion had slithered into her thoughts and raised its poisonous head. — Thrity Umrigar

We all begin with a story of ourselves that we believe to be true. But perhaps true personal change, even healing, can only happen when we change that narrative, when we begin to tell ourselves and others a different story. Surely — Thrity Umrigar

India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody's wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone's life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination. — Thrity Umrigar

And so I have to live. Because we live for more than just ourselves, Most of the time we live for others, keep putting one foot before the other, left and right, left and right, so that walking becomes a habit, just like breathing. Ina n out, left and right. — Thrity Umrigar

Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out. — Thrity Umrigar

This solidarity business I used to talk about ain't just
what do you youngsters call it?
theoretical. It means putting your body, your physical self, on the line, baby girl. Even when
especially when
it ain't convenient. — Thrity Umrigar

So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties. — Thrity Umrigar

When the God enter into your house, he not enter looking like the God. He enter looking like human being. God enter my life looking like Maggie. "Holy cow," Maggie say, laughing. "I — Thrity Umrigar

We are earthbound creatures, Maggie had thought. No matter how tempting the sky. No matter how beautiful the stars. No matter how deep the dream of flight. We are creatures of the earth. Born with legs, not wings, legs that root us to the earth, and hands that allow us to build our homes, hands that bind us to our loved ones within those homes. The glamour, the adrenaline rush, the true adventure, is here, within these homes. The wars, the detente, the coups, the peace treaties, the celebrations, the mournings, the hunger, the sating, all here. — Thrity Umrigar

She wanted to explain everything to him - how certain notes of the Moonlight Sonata shredded her heart like wind inside a paper bag; how her soul felt as endless and deep as the sea churning on their left; how the sight of the young Muslim couple filled her with an emotion that was equal parts joy and sadness; and above all, how she wanted a marriage that was different from the dead sea of marriages she saw all around her, how she wanted something finer, deeper, a marriage made out of silk and velvet instead of coarse cloth, a marriage made of clouds and stardust and red earth and ocean foam and moonlight and sonatas and books and art galleries and passion and kindness and sorrow and ecstasy and of fingers touching from under a burqua. — Thrity Umrigar

Liquor is the kiss of the angels as well as the curse of the devil. It can conceal but also can reveal — Thrity Umrigar

Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened. — Thrity Umrigar

You felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down — Thrity Umrigar

Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles. — Thrity Umrigar

Every year when I stands first in my class, Ma gives me the advice: Daughter, she say, never be gamandi. What you have, given to you by God. You just a basket into which God puts the flowers. Flowers not belong to you. They belongs to God. Same way, your clever belong to God. — Thrity Umrigar

What she had believed was indignation or rage or a deep intolerance for injustice came down to this: she was irreducibly in love with this bewitching planet, this thrilling life, this heartbreaking species she belonged to, with its capacity for stupefying destruction and breathtaking magnanimity. — Thrity Umrigar

like a drop of ink in a glass of milk — Thrity Umrigar

Think of how far you've come," Maggie said softly. "And then ask yourself how much farther you wish to go — Thrity Umrigar

Ma wrong about one thing. When I was girl, she only talk about love in the marriage. [ ... ] Nobody tell me what make real marriage
respect. — Thrity Umrigar

So all I'm saying is, everything that seems important
our quarrels, or philosophical differences
in the end, it doesn't matter much. You know? In the end, what matters is what remains. — Thrity Umrigar