Family Life

Having spent most of their lives in India, where a bad marriage is often accepted as a part of life and where depression and mental illness are described as a person being moody, they saw these things as just life. Unhappy, though, and sometimes embarrassed that their lives were not as perfect as in the movies or as one was expected to pretend them to be at temple, they wanted to talk to someone.

“Indians are that way. They are cowards. Instead of admitting they made a mistake, they would rather lie and try to blame you.”

As long as I wrote about exotic things, I thought, I could then be a not very good writer and still be successful.

The biographer had mentioned that Hemingway’s style was very simple. I understood this to mean that if I became a writer, I wouldn’t have to be very good, that being merely acceptable would be sufficient for me to have a good life.

Mrs. Kohli introduced us to a woman standing nearby. The woman was in pants and a shiny silk blouse. This meant either that she was lower class, since she was not dressed appropriately for a religious ceremony, or she was very educated and did not have to be like other people.

Like many people of her generation, those born before Independence, my mother viewed gloom as unpatriotic. To complain was to show that one was not willing to accept difficulties; that one was not willing to do the hard work that was needed to build the country.

I didn’t like Birju having a girlfriend. A part of me thought that to be with a different race was unnatural, disgusting.

In those shy days, when even husbands and wives never touched in public, to wander out of Hindi was to suggest that something indecent was being referred to.