In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I'd grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn't expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future.
Bharati MukherjeeAncestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one's individuality.
Bharati MukherjeeMy life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it's just continuous overload.
Bharati MukherjeeI have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
Bharati MukherjeeI'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
Bharati Mukherjee