Ancestral Habits Of Mind Can Be Constricting;

I Have To Put Down Roots Where I Decide To Stay. It Wasn't Enough For Me To Be An Expatriate Indian In Canada. If I Can't Feel That I Can Make Social, Political And Emotional Commitments To A Place, I Have To Find Another Place.

I Flew Into A Small Airport Surrounded By Cornfields And Pastures, Ready To Carry Out The Two Commands My Father Had Written Out For Me The Night Before I Left Calcutta: Spend Two Years Studying Creative Writing At The Iowa Writers Workshop, Then Come Back Home And Marry The Bridegroom He Selected For Me From Our Caste And Class.

Ancestral Habits Of Mind Can Be Constricting; They Also Confer One's Individuality.

We Do Things When It Is Our Time To Do Them. They Do Not Occur To Us Until It Is Time; They Cannot Be Resisted, Once Their Time Has Come. It's A Question Of Time, Not Motive.

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.