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.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skillfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

As I remember my grandfather and those Christmas mornings he gave for a little girl's pleasure, I know that often a big life starts with doing small things.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Because it is the lot of mothers to remember what no one else cares to, Mrs. Outta thinks. To tell them over and over until they are lodged, perforce, in family lore. We are the keepers of the heart's dusty corners.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

But inside loss there can be gain, too, like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

But Krishna was a chameleon.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Each day has a color, a smell.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric, it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni