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.

Buddha's Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader's attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.

they say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. their gaze is a rope of gold binding each other. even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. they can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again

Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength --or else we die.

I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.

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

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