# Quote — Amit Chaudhuri, Afternoon Raag

> ... my mother will settle on the rug and unclip the bellows, pulling and pushing them with a mild aquatic motion with her left hand, the fingers of the right hand flowering upon the keys, the wedding-bangle suspended around her wrist. Each time the bellows are pushed, the round holes on the back open and close like eyes. Without the body music is not possible; it provides the hollow space for resonance as does the curved wooden box of the violin or the round urn of the sitar. At the moment of singing, breath tips in the swelling diaphragm as water does in a pitcher. The voice-box itself is a microscopic harp, its cords tautening and relaxing with each inflection.

- Author: [Amit Chaudhuri](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri.md)
- Book: [Afternoon Raag](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/afternoon-raag.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Amit_Chaudhuri#Afternoon_Raag_(1993)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/afternoon-raag/my-mother-will

## More from this book

> The armchairs, with their flat, sedentary cushions, were designed for society, but the bed was made for solitude. It had a straitened and measured narrowness, an austere frame made to contain the curves of a single body, to circumscribe it, carry it, give it a place, and when I slept at night, I possessed it entirely.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/afternoon-raag/the-armchairs-with.md)

> While reading the Times of India each morning, my father spares a minute for the cartoon by R. K. Laxman. While my mother is, like a magician, making untidy sheets disappear in the bedroom and producing fresh towels in the bathroom, or braving bad weather in the kitchen, my father, in the extraordinary Chinese calm of the drawing-room, is dmiring the cartoon by R. K. Laxman, and, if my mother happens to be there, unselfishly sharing it with her. She, as expected, misunderstands it completely, laughing not at the joke but at the expressions on the faces of the caricatures, and at the hilarious fact that they talk to each other like human beings.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/afternoon-raag/while-reading-the.md)

> At the base of her ankle is a deep, ugly scar she got when a car ran over her foot when she was six years old. That was in a small town in Bangladesh. Thus, even today, she hesitates superstitiously before crossing the road, and is painfully shy of walking distances. Her fears make her laughable. The scar is printed on her skin like a radiant star.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/afternoon-raag/at-the-base.md)