
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

Strangely, it never occurred to Western cooks to dry roast and grind together peppercorn, fennel seed, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, then throw that spice mix into oil along with mustard seed, garlic, and onions to make a masala, the foundation of any curry.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
begins to feel now for the first time lying under him: that she’s integral to his world, just as he is her world. She cannot imagine now that the pleasure she sees on his face will be something she too will experience from time to time, or that she’ll unobtrusively find ways to guide him in a manner that pleases her.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
All water is connected, and her world is limitless. He stands at the limits of his. On her sixteenth birthday, she hears a commotion
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
Just as the ocean manifests as a wave or surf, but neither wave nor surf is the ocean, so also the Creator—God or Brahma—generates an impression of a universe that takes the form of a Swedish doctor, or a blind leper. Rune is real. The leper is real. The fishing net is real. Yet it is all maya, their separateness an illusion.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
It comes free with a splash, a pink jewel, a miracle that something so beautiful can emerge from water so murky.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
But such memories are woven from gossamer threads; time eats holes in the fabric, and these she must darn with myth and fable.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
arching her thumb back to exaggerate the shallow, triangular depression on the back of her hand between the two tendons that run from the thumb base to the wrist. Philipose is mesmerized by the elegance of that bowed digit resembling a swan’s neck, and by the fine, translucent hairs on her forearm.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
.wgelevating the tiny details
Love, she thinks, isn’t ownership, but a sense that where her body once ended, it begins anew in him, extending her reach, her confidence, and her strength. As with anything so rare and precious, it comes with a new anxiety: the fear of losing him, the fear of that heartbeat ceasing. That would mean the end of her.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
All around her, the sounds of the land he made his and where he lived his life feel sharper and exaggerated: