QUOTE "The end came, she admits, partly out of financial necessity. "I was very poor, and everyone in my family was saying, 'Oh, you're going to have to get a job.' My mother was the one person who stood by the book, but everyone else was saying 'It's awful, you really have to be responsible, you must get a job, you have to get health insurance!'" UNQUOTE Three elements. 1. Everyone else around you pretty much says "You have to grow up. You are not doing conventional this or conventional that. You are a failure. Eight years have been wasted." 2. BUT one strong person stands by you to defend what you do NO MATTER what, and gives you hope and emotional nourishment in times of uncertainties and even poverty. [It's that persona's support that keeps you going, even when everyone else says that you are pretty much a failure.] 3. You keep on doing what you do: write, write and write, despite self-doubts. 4. Then, you win this super-prestigious prize which will change your life! Lovely!! Heart-warming and Life-affirming!! I find this sort of success --which has a sort of "A Beautiful Mind" sort of resonance to it -- much more inspirational than . . .someone's collection of a string of SAFE successes. I haven't read the book, yet. Will do so soon; meantime, my best wishes to Ms. Desai, and thanks SL for starting this conversation on Sajha. oohi "just another inheritor of hope" ashu