In India, There Are Real Consequences To

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.

I Am Aware Of Myself As A Four-hundred-year-old Woman, Born In The Captivity Of A Colonial, Pre-industrial Oral Culture And Living Now As A Contemporary New Yorker.

In India, There Are Real Consequences To Inattention; Drivers Who Jeopardize Pedestrians Can Be Lynched On The Spot.

[on Her Writing Agenda:] Make The Familiar Exotic; The Exotic Familiar.

A Farmer Is Dependent On Too Many Things Outside His Control; It Makes For Modesty.