The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

This is what Kaikeyi failed to see: it’s not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.

once mistrust has wounded it mortally, love can’t be fully healed again.

Such is the seduction of love: it makes you not want to think too much. It makes you unwilling to question the one you love.

I thought of love’s contradictions, how it fills us with joy but also with worry for welfare of the loved one and pain for his suffering.

At the same time, though, I was saddened. What I’d taken as admiration all these years had really been a kind of indulgence, the way one might praise a child for her childish achievements. The womanly skills I’d mastered were important and intricate, and by no means easy. They required deep intelligence, an intelligence of the heart. But Ram didn’t understand that. He didn’t understand the complexity of the female existence.

‘Let them realize that these beings, though different, aren’t necessarily evil or stupid or dangerous. That many are noble and admirable.

anger gives out a powerful vibration even when it’s wordless.