Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you.

After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?' I'd asked. 'Do you really need to know?' my father had asked back.

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

There was an unexpected freedom in finding out that one wasn't as important as one had always assumed!

But maybe as I get older, I begin to see beauty where I least expected it before.

Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.

I walk out of the room, lurching under the weight of the lesson I've learned less than one hour into wifehood: How quickly the sweetest love turns rancid when it isn't returned. When the one you love loves someone else.