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“A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.”
And then you were called into the world, Dhri. So that what started with milk could end one day in blood.
Three dangerous moments will come to you. The first will be just before your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you’re shamed as you’d never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse. Maybe it will mitigate the catastrophes to come.”
Remember that, little sister: wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you’ll wait forever.
“Your first lesson, princess, is to know how to sidestep questions you don’t want to answer. You do it by ignoring them.”
“Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you’re lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learn to be satisfied with them.”
Can our actions change our destiny? Or are they like sand piled against the breakage in a dam, merely delaying the inevitable?
Nor was I particularly delighted by the virginity boon, which seemed designed more for my husbands’ benefit than mine. That seemed to be the nature of boons given to women—they were handed to us like presents we hadn’t quite wanted.
Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.
A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!
I wanted to believe that sometimes good may happen without bad biting its heels. I wanted to believe that sometimes the gods give us gifts and ask for nothing back. He looked at me with a sigh, part sympathy, part exasperation. “Dear one,” he said, “time will teach you what you refuse to learn from your well-wishers.”
For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride.
“A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It’s only your response to it that causes your sorrow. But enough of philosophy! I’m hungry.”
we cannot force ourselves to love—or to withhold it. At best, we can curb our actions. The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.
What is the most wondrous thing on earth? Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.
“The life that you’re living today is only a bubble in the cosmic stream, shaped by the karma of other lifetimes. The one who is your husband in this birth was perhaps your enemy in the last, and he whom you hate may have been your beloved. Why weep for any of them, then?”
Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.
Perhaps that is the miracle of stories. They make us realize that we’re not alone in our folly and our suffering.
I’m going to heaven to enjoy all its pleasures with my friends. You’ll rule a kingdom peopled with widows and orphans and wake each morning to the grief of loss. Who’s the real winner, then, and who the loser?
This is the nature of sorrow: often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it.
