Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. - Jhumpa Lahiri

She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still.

Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.

Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.