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South Asian Literature Quotes

Browse 26 quotes about South Asian Literature.

South Asian Literature Quotes

“There was only one thing to do, she decided: make pickles. The mangoes on the tree were just about ready: grassy-green and tongue-smackingly sour. She asked the boys to pick them from the tree. When they were younger, this was the children’s job. Maya was by far the better climber: her foot would curl over the branches and hold her fast, while she stretched her arms and plucked the fruit, throwing it down to Rehana, who kept shouting, ‘Be careful! Be careful!’ She would slice the green mangoes and cook them slowly with chillies and mustard seeds. Then she would stuff them into jars and leave them on the roof to ripen. There was a rule about not touching pickles during the monthlies. She couldn’t remember who had told her that rule – her mother? – no, her mother had probably never sliced a mango in her brief, dreamy life. Must have been one of her sisters. Marzia, she was the best cook. And the enforcer of rules. But Rehana had decided long ago this was a stupid rule. It was hard enough to time the pickle-making anyway, between the readiness of the fruit and the weather, which had to be hot and dry. As she recited the pickle recipe to herself, Rehana wondered what her sisters would make of her at this very moment. Guerrillas at Shona. Sewing kathas on the rooftop. Her daughter at rifle practice. The thought of their shocked faces made her want to laugh. She imagined the letter she would write. Dear sisters, she would say. Our countries are at war; yours and mine. We are on different sides now. I am making pickles for the war effort. You see how much I belong here and not to you.”

BangladeshSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:A Golden Age
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“I do not need to understand words to know he is disappointed I am not a boy. Some things need no translation. And I know, because my body remembers without benefit of words, that men who do not welcome girl-babies will not treasure me as I grow to woman - though he call me princess just because the Guru told him to. I have come so far, I have borne so much pain and emptiness! But men have not yet changed.”

IndiaHistorical FictionPakistanWomens FictionSouth Asian LiteratureSikh
Book:What the Body Remembers
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“One time you mentioned the loneliness inside of marriage and I did not understand what you were saying. Two people are together; they have come from the same place; they share the same values, the same language. Practically speaking, they are the two halves of one consciousness. They eat the same food; they have a child; they sleep in the same bed, how can they be lonely.”

WomenMarriageSouth Asian Literature
Book:Desirable Daughters
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“We must all find pointless causes to live for, or why bother with breath? Because, on reflection, once you have seen your own face and recognised the colour of your eyes, tasted the air and smelled the soil, drunk from the purest fountains and the dirtiest wells, that is the kindest thing you can say about life. Its's not nothing.”

Life QuotesExistentialismHope QuotesSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
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“When death becomes an escape, when it becomes attractive, the purpose of life is fulfilled. To teach one it's futility, it's worthlessness, that is the purpose of life. Incongruously, its value lies in having imparted that lesson." "In the nights though, I couldn't help but weave the golden cloth of my dreams. Each stitch from heart to thought, and thought to heart, was painful to bear, even if it was joyous at times. Because each thread was fraught with the fears of being broken midway, lost and never found again.”

Diverse CharactersSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian WriterDiverse ReadsPakistani Fiction In English
Book:This House of Clay and Water
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“In the nights though, I couldn't help but weave the golden cloth of my dreams. Each stitch from heart to thought, and thought to heart, was painful to bear, even if it was joyous at times. Because each thread was fraught with the fears of being broken midway, lost and never found again. Nida”

South Asian LiteratureDiverse ReadsPakistaniauthorPakistani Fiction In EnglishPost Colonial Literature
Book:This House of Clay and Water
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“I’ll tell you now: this America of ours—it’s not the country me and my kind grew up in. It’s not the America these new people come to find neither. And, seems to me, this unknown country no longer cares for what either of us got to offer. The handful of folks who’ve figured out what they want, well, they grab it from the rest of us without askin’. What has happened to America, can anyone tell me? (Return to India)”

Literary FictionShort StoriesSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:Each of Us Killers
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“When baking bread, a process happens called “oven spring.” The high heat of the oven releases the water from the dough as steam and yeast help release carbon dioxide from the sugars. The steam and carbon dioxide cause rapid expansion in the loaf’s volume. I think, sometimes, of what happened that night with Charlie as a kind of oven spring for my life. (Life Spring)”

IndiaLiterary FictionShort StoriesSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:Each of Us Killers
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“Some numbers I want them to know: fifty, the age of the man they knocked over; fifteen, my age when I met him as a child bride; twenty-five, the number of years I had been his wife; fifty thousand, the amount we had gotten for our farmland to pay for my sick parents’ hospital bills; two, the count of bottles of rat poison we had bought to end our constant worries about work and money; one. the only time I had been pregnant, and he had gone from the happiest to the saddest man I had ever known. (The Waiting)”

IndiaLiterary FictionShort StoriesSouth Asian LiteratureSouth Asian Writer
Book:Each of Us Killers
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