Alison Singh Gee Quotes

I stared back at him with something that, I realize now, was close to cellular recognition. In one glance, he recalled my father, my first boyfriend, my college love, my future.

We were forever one earthquake away from losing it all.

I had chosen to leave, and live alone in a foreign country. And in fleeing thousands of miles across the Pacific, I chose myself, and a chance at a different future.

In India, we have a saying: 'Always look down, never look up," he said. "When you are trying to determine where you stand in life, don't look upward at the rich people, the people with everything. Look downward at the people who have nothing, those begging on the street, those living in the slums. There's no end to looking up and feeling badly. And if you try to spit upward it only falls down upon your own face. Only by looking down do you understand your dharma.

We grew up hearing stories about how he has been cheated - out of money, out of reputation, out of a grander fate. We had lost everything, he'd wail, and that was despite the fact that we had each other.

[Indians] don't think about ghosts as those stereotypical spook in white sheets that scare the knickers off everybody. We believe that we coexist with many, many spirits. They're all around us - because the soul never dies. The body withers away, but the essence of the person remains, watching over us.