1
[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.Alison Singh Gee
2
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.Alison Singh Gee
3
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.Alison Singh Gee
4
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.Alison Singh Gee
5
We were forever one earthquake away from losing it all.Alison Singh Gee
6
It was during those years that I discovered that loving [my father] was like sticking a blade into my own heart. It got me nowhere, except awake in the middle of the night, recalling the years when my father was the strongest, the smartest, the funniest, and I lay curled in my bed, wondering why I had been cheated out of a father who loved me, and one I could love in return.Alison Singh Gee
7
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.Alison Singh Gee