What lay, Ravi wondered, between the loss of innocence and rites for departed ancestors?

O.V Vijayan, Legends of Khasak (1994) 

Human life, Indranath reflected, goes through such phases and transformations itself. Nothing is permanent. In this process, human relationships become a sharp, piercing weapon, hurtful and acrimonious to near and dear ones.

  Indira Goswami, The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker (2004)

She shrank within herself and tried to hide her voluptuous form as much as possible. But her whole body was blooming like white kathana flowers. How long could she veil it from the eyes of the world? Even through the cracked mud walls of this ramshackle house, her growing body yielded tantalising glimpses to prying eyes, like the broken, scintillating image of the moon on the ripples of Jagalia.

 Indira Goswami, The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker (2004)

The most powerful as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa are posited not on an identity but rather on a difference with the 'modular' forms of the national society propagated by the modern West.

 Partha Chatterjee, Whose Imagined Community (1991) 

Benedict Anderson demonstrated with much subtlety and originality that nations were not the determinate products of given sociological conditions such as language or race or religion; they had been, in Europe and everywhere else in the world, imagined into existence.

Partha Chatterjee, Whose Imagined Community (1991) 

In dreams begin responsibilities. The way we see the world affects the world we see.

 Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line (speech delivered at Yale University, 2002)

Once upon a time the birds held a conference. The great bird-god, the Simurgh, had sent a messenger, a hoopoe, to summon them to his legendary home far away atop the circular mountain of Qâf, which girdled the earth. The birds weren’t particularly keen on the idea of this dangerous-sounding quest. They tried to make excuses—a previous engagement, urgent business elsewhere. Just thirty birds embarked on the pilgrimage. Leaving home, crossing the frontier of their land, stepping across that line, was in this story a religious act, their adventure a divine requirement rather than a response to an ornithological need. Love drove these birds as it drove the mermaid, but it was the love of God. On the road there were obstacles to overcome, dreadful mountains, fear- some chasms, allegories and challenges. In all quests the voyager is con- fronted by terrifying guardians of territory, an ogre here, a dragon there. So far and no further, the guardian commands. But the voyager must refuse the other’s definition of the boundary, must transgress against the limits of what fear prescribes. He steps across that line. The defeat of the ogre is an opening in the self, an increase in what it is possible for the voyager to be.

So it was with the thirty birds. At the end of the story, after all their vicissitudes and overcomings, they reached the summit of the mountain of Qâf, and discovered that they were alone. The Simurgh wasn’t there. After all they had endured, this was a displeasing discovery. They made their feelings known to the hoopoe who started the whole thing off; whereupon the hoopoe explained to them the punning etymology that revealed their journey’s secret meaning. The name of the god broke down into two parts: “si,” meaning “thirty,” and “murgh,” which is to say “birds.” By crossing those frontiers, conquering those terrors and reaching their goal, they themselves were now what they were looking for. They had become the god they sought. 

Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line (speech delivered at Yale University, 2002)

Later she whispered to Durga. "Tell these women to go away." Durga whispered back. "They have all come for your sake. They are unhappy at your suffering."

Indira Goswami, The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker 

These women would prowl in the night, haunting the spacious backyards of houses, to poke and probe the washed dirty cloth pieces hanging out there, for the tell-tale marks of menstruation, hoping to find some signs so that they could get their vicious pleasure in denouncing the girls as outcasts...

Indira Goswami, The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker 

Amoti: Four days in Asarh (July) when the earth is supposed to be unclean and the digging of earth is forbidden. A ritual observed mostly by Assamese widows. It is believed that the earth menstruates during this period.

Golokdham: A game of dice. In the dice board, portraits of various abodes of Hindu Gods are drawn. As the final goal, a Golokdham, which is known as the abode of Lord Krishna with his consort Radha and the gopis, is depicted. The dice player who reaches it, crossing all the hurdles wins the game. It was a popular game among the women of South Kamrup in those days (1948).