Nish

“We don’t admit this publicly because we know we should be happy. After all, everyone else seems to be. Open a magazine or
turn on the television, and you’ll find yourself bombarded by images of perfect, perfectly satisfied women.

Which means the problem must lie with us, mustn’t it? Perhaps we are weak, neurotic, selfish, or ungrateful. Or simply lacking . . .
something.

And so we buy the product, hoping it will fill the void or dull the ache. It never does.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“book A Place Called Lost the author believed that every hardship in life was a key to some greater understanding, and it was up to you if you chose to use it to unlock the future or bolt the door.”
― Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop

“The provenance of a churel is a woman wronged. A pregnant woman’s demise. Death at the hands of vicious in-laws or a violent husband. Dying during childbirth or within the twelve-day period of impurity afterward. Whenever a woman died grossly unfulfilled, she’d return as a churel. Those surviving her could attempt to stymie her transformation: bury rather than burn her, weigh her down with stones, dress her grave with thorns, set her in the ground facedown so as to disorient her. Were that she’d been given such healthy regard in life, rendering such measures moot. Nevertheless, if her revenge-lust was potent enough, she’d find her way home and so it would begin.

Only a man would imagine retribution wrapped in lust rather than just painful death. Only a man would morph a wounded woman into a hideous monster. Only a man would then, for the sake of phallic pride, attribute her with shape-shifting powers, so that the creature he’d lain down with over and over again was deceptively gorgeous.

the churel was a cautionary tale created by women for women? If the natural world afforded them no protection, then a supernatural story might. A way of terrifying men into considering a woman’s well-being from time to time.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Akhila, may you also have the good fortune of having your children arrange your wedding,’ and spat out enough bitterness for a lifetime.”
― Banu Mushtaq, Heart Lamp: Selected Stories