And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.

Humans are animals of habit.

...a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Every night outside my house I pass a road gang of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber optic cables to speed up digital revolution. They work by the light of a few candles.

Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-- just as an education, a precaution.

Margaret Kochamma's tiny, ordered life relinquished itself to this truly baroque bedlam with the quiet gasp of a warm body entering a chilly sea.