"With the birth of Akash, in his sudden, perfect presence, Ruma had felt awe for the first time in her life. He still had the power to stagger her at… - Jhumpa Lahiri

"With the birth of Akash, in his sudden, perfect presence, Ruma had felt awe for the first time in her life. He still had the power to stagger her at times — simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small, sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born. Only the words her mother used were more literal, enriching the tired phrase with meaning: "He is made from your meat and bone." It had caused Ruma to acknowledge the supernatural in everyday life. But death, too, had the power to awe, she knew this now-that a human being could be alive for years and years, thinking and breathing and eating, full of a million worries and feelings and thoughts, taking up space in the world, and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible."

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About Jhumpa Lahiri

Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri (born July 11, 1967) is an Indian-American novelist, short story writer, and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Nilanjana Sudeshna
Native Name: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী
Alternative Names: Jūmpā Lāhīrī Nilanjana Svadeshna Lahiri Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri Jhumba Lahiri

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Shorter versions of this quote

He still had the power to stagger her at timessimply the fact that he was breathing that all his organs were in their proper places that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born.

Additional quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling of sorts...Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So that time was a form of sustenance. On earth time was marked by the sun and moon, by rotations that distinguished day from night, that had led to clocks and calendars. The present was a speck that kept blinking, brightening and diminishing, something neither alive nor dead. How long did it last? One second? Less? It was always in flux; in the time it took to consider it, it slipped away. In one of her notebooks from Calcutta were jottings in Udayan’s hand, on the laws of classical physics. Newton’s theory that time was an absolute entity, a stream flowing at a uniform rate of its own accord. Einstein’s contribution, that time and space were intertwined. He’d described it in terms of particles, velocities. A system of relations among instantaneous events. Something called time

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