Is the desire for vengeance stronger than the longing to be loved? What evil magic does it possess to draw the human heart so powerfully to it?
Haven’t you seen how many of them come to the palace each week, just to see us wave to them from the public balcony?
Doesn’t the imagination always exaggerate—or diminish—truth?
All the way back, I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn’t mean giving in. It didn’t mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with th...
All of us groping in caverns, our fingertips raw against stone, searching for that slight crack, the edge of a door opening into love.
Ah, how helpless we children are, how dependent on the whims of adults.
The darkness is a cresting wave. It sweeps me up out of my body until I float among the stars, those tine bright pores on the sky's skin. If only I could pass through them, I would end up on the other...
Write our story, too. For always we’ve been pushed into corners, trivialized, misunderstood, blamed, forgotten—or maligned and used as cautionary tales.
Who held his cries in until red swam behind his eyelids like bleeding stars.
What is more numerous than the grass? The thoughts that rise in the mind of man. Who is truly wealthy? That man to whom the agreeable and disagreeable, wealth and woe, past and future, are the same. W...
This was my first lesson on the nature of love: that in a moment it could fulfil the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.
The herbs and chants weren’t working because of my anger towards Ram. In some dark part of my soul, I wanted him to suffer.
The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.
The grandfather dropped his weapons and knelt before him. On his face was a look I could only interpret as hope. And have you come to set me free finally, Govinda? he asked.
That’s how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.
That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.
Such rulers were adored by the citizens they protected, but often their families had to bear the brunt of sacrifice.
Such is the ancient law of the universe. Of karma and its fruit. The idea of motive is irrelevant to it.
Sarojini admits he has a point; girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women, and surely Bimal does a good job of that. But deep in a hidden place inside her tha...
Ram and Lakshman had joined their father, who had been housed in a separate palace, at the edge of the royal grounds because it was considered inauspicious for brides and grooms to meet in the days th...