Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Once a boy came running in from play and asked, Mother, what is milk? My friends say it is creamy and white and has the sweetest taste, second only to the nectar of the gods. Please, mother, I want milk to drink.
The mother, who was too poor to buy milk, mixed some flour in water, added jaggery, and gave it to the boy.
The boy drank it and danced in joy, saying, Now I, too, know what milk tastes like!
And the mother, who through all the years of her hardship had never shed a tear, wept at his trust and her deception.

, lonely years of my childhood, when my father's palace seemed to tighten its grip around me until I couldn't breathe,

whenever I had a serious question, something I couldn't ask Dhri, who was too straightforward for the knotted ways of the world, it seemed that Krishna was always there to provide an answer. And that too is a puzzle: why did my father allow him to visit me freely when he had kept me segregated from other men and women?

was genuinely fond of my brother; but I had the impression that it was I whom he really came to see. He called me by a special name, the female form of his own: Krishnaa. It had two meanings: the dark one, or the one whose attraction can't be resisted

Perhaps the reason Krishna and I got along so well was that we were both severely dark-skinned.

Could darkness have its own magnetism?

A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.

I was fascinated by Krishna because I couldn't decipher him.

But Krishna was a chameleon.

He asked me what I thought of my place in the world as a woman and a princess—and then challenged my rather traditional beliefs.