## New highlights added July 13, 2024 at 5:56 AM - All knowledge could be gained only through adversity. ([Location 698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=698)) - “Tragedy is a demon that has a tail attached to it. The tail is the lesson that you are supposed to draw from the tragedy. This is the truth that civilization has recognized through the ages so that you don’t feel robbed of everything. The demon burned down your house. Oh, but at least you got the chance to warm your hands on the fire.” ([Location 704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=704)) - “curiosity”—jigyasa—as his nom de plume. ([Location 815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=815)) - Life is long and the real wealth is time; you have to fight to not let it slip away. He must not abandon faith or squander his days. That ought to be life’s goal. This thought took hold of Jadu as he sat on the bus and he raised the glass window so that the rushing wind kissed his face. ([Location 1270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=1270)) - It had become possible to overcome everything simply by not giving up. Perhaps this was the lesson that the gods wanted you to absorb. ([Location 1393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=1393)) - Money didn’t explain everything, you needed to think of culture as a whole. It was important to consider who you were, how you thought of yourself, and what struggles had shaped you. ([Location 1655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=1655)) - Time had been reduced to a blankness called waiting. ([Location 1899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=1899)) - Tags: [[orange]] - in the society in which he lived stories never found their endings. ([Location 2297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2297)) - There was a small painted sign on the desk in front of Amitesh facing the visitor. It said in Hindi, Please Do Not, by Sitting Idle Here, Waste Your Precious Time. ([Location 2324](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2324)) - Tags: [[orange]] - high school essay describing how the students had spent their summer: a time of adventure and visits to exotic places, a place called the past. ([Location 2443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2443)) - Tags: [[orange]] - In my profession of history writing, this is called teleological thinking, where the end result governs the way in which we present everything that precedes it. ([Location 2492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2492)) - Tags: [[orange]] - I searched for the photographs I had put away in various places—albums, diaries, even my phone—where the past was stored forgotten. ([Location 2567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2567)) - How much time does it take to drink a cup of tea? Does it take longer than to drink a cup brimming with tears? ([Location 2630](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2630)) - Tags: [[orange]] - “You do not owe your husband or anyone else anything. Stay true to your life’s intention.” ([Location 2653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2653)) - Tags: [[orange]] - The Buddha asked the woman to bring him some mustard seeds from a house where there had been no death. The woman knocked on the door of one house after another—and after hearing in each house a sorrowful account of loss, she realized that grief had been a visitor to every home. I always thought that this parable wasn’t so much about the presence of sorrow as it was about Buddha’s style of teaching. How to invent an active-learning exercise. My ([Location 2664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2664)) - Tags: [[orange]] - I didn’t know if, at the end, I too had simply used Kamla and got recognition for myself without changing anything for her. ([Location 2979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=2979)) - I was struck by his air of indifference that bordered on a kind of daring. It was as if he knew how insignificant we were, or our worldly affairs were, and how meaningless it all was in the end. ([Location 3219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=3219)) - Sergei Krikalev had been told to stay in space until further notice. He was unable to return home because the Soviet Union had fallen apart while he was in space. ([Location 3649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=3649)) - those who were in prison then were in power now. They were now sending others to prison. ([Location 3791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=3791)) - “A thousand books, or over a lifetime, many thousands more. They can pass through your hands. But at the right time, one book finds you and changes you forever.” ([Location 3806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=3806)) - He didn’t ever again mention wanting to be interviewed on any show or getting my help finding him a publisher for his book. I felt relieved, and also guilty. And, more than anything else, his silence made me think that he wasn’t as simpleminded as I had assumed. He was sensitive and had seen my awkwardness as a kind of refusal. And he had stepped away, graciously and kindly, so that I wasn’t awkward anymore. ([Location 3879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=3879)) - The strength I had seen in Saira, the boldness of her statements, came from the fact that she had chosen a separation from that fake husband that was the State. She had declared her independence from the pretense of protection that the government offered her. Saira knew that the armed State was a bullying husband, and all its laws were nothing but a system of excuses to support its abusive behavior. She was not going to be a silent and submissive victim. ([Location 4204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=4204)) - I’m not a writer. It is not always easy to line up the past so that it leads to the present.” ([Location 4456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=4456)) - “When I look at these people, and some of our leaders are among them, I feel that theirs are wounds I can never heal because there is no medicine for bad faith. These are people who are lying to others, and they are also lying to themselves. ([Location 4544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=4544)) - Professor Dey, sir, this is what I have learned in my life. That there is no end to living. Things keep changing, people change, in ways that you had never expected or even imagined. ([Location 4890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=4890)) - I look at the new factories and karkhanas spewing smoke and worry about the world in which my children will live. I learned from my mother that this is what the citizens of a defeated nation must feel like as they watch their soldiers bound in chains and marched outside the city gates. The people know that their country has changed forever. ([Location 5173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C5VB9C9Y&location=5173))