The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (The Jaipur Trilogy, #2)

by Alka Joshi

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway. —MOTHER TERESA

If you want the rose, you must put up with the thorn.

Nimmi has been grieving since Malik left a month ago, and I know the essences of fruits and flowers are a natural balm for sadness.

To me, henna is a way for a woman to find a piece of herself she might have mislaid.

When I was a boy working with Auntie-Boss, she used to lecture me about discretion. “We know things about people, Malik, because we go into their homes, the place where they are most vulnerable. That does not mean that we can divulge what we’ve have seen or heard to everyone we know. There’s more power in keeping a secret than in betraying it.” I never thought Lakshmi meant that we should blackmail people using our knowledge, only that our clients would be loyal to us if we showed loyalty to them.

Naturally, he’s concerned for his priya.

I love that my name is used in this book for its meaning: "beloved".

There are so many secrets in our world, aren’t there? Ones we keep, ones we reveal, but only at the right moments.

“The ideal outcome is always the preservation of integrity. It’s painful when the consequence of the outcome is so severe. I understand that the Royal Jewel Cinema will have to be completely rebuilt. But it will stand as a reminder to thousands of people who cross its threshold that the right thing is worth doing.”