Padma Quotes

She had sculpted the mist, the way those who have no choice do. She had willed a life for the two of us in a new land. ~ Padma Lakshmi

You don't have to climb ladders to reach God. He dances within all He creates. ~ Padma Venkatraman

You don't need expensive classes and all kinds of weird equipment if you really want to be in shape. There are great ways to do it that are very economical, it just takes a time commitment, even if it means waking up a half hour a day before the rest of the household gets up because that's the only time you have. ~ Padma Lakshmi

All chefs are like Jewish mothers. They want to feed you and feed you and impress you. It's an eagerness to please. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Every country I would go to, even if it was just on a modeling job, I would go to their markets. If I went to Morocco for 'Elle' magazine, I would be in the spice markets during my off time and just come back with a suitcase full of stuff that I really wanted to try. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Back then, eating was also a means of beautification, since the more aloo tikki and murukku you consumed, the more likely you'd reach a voluptuousness akin to an American size ten or twelve, required for looking good in a sari. ~ Padma Lakshmi

And then there come the tears, the pain, the letting go of things once held so dear, so comfortable, so much a part of who you thought you were, and what defined you. Identity weakens. Divine Love is yearned for, a new feeling. The healing begins. Sexuality starts to be explored consciously as a way to share and exchange energy, as a way to elevate and expand, as a way to heal and release, as a way to trigger and evolve, as a way to express a deeper love and connect more parts of yourself together, designed to lead towards the sacred. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha

They got under each of my shoulders and pulled me up, Padma walking in front of me and holding her arms out for good measure. I walked on my own, but I knew that if they hadn't been there, I might have fallen more than once. Side by side, we marched into the Ocean, all of us crying for help.
What? I felt the swirling waves of Her worry as we floated just beneath the surface.
Something's wrong with Kahlen, Miaka said.
In the water, they could let me go, and I floated there, the Ocean holding me like a child.
I'm so tired.
Look at her skin, Elizabeth said. She's so pale. And she keeps sleeping. Like she needs it.
She has a fever, too, Miaka added. I was acutely aware that my temperature was off; I could feel the water around me warming from my touch....She fretted. This has never happened before. I don't know what to do.
Maybe if she stays in You for a while, it would help, Elizabeth suggested.
What, Miaka? the Ocean asked suddenly.
Nothing. But she did look like she was hiding something.
What were you thinking?
Nothing, Miaka insisted. Flipping through ideas, it's all nothing. I think Elizabeth is onto something. She swam up to me. We'll come and check on you every hour until you feel like coming back to bed.
I didn't want to say how much it bothered me that she said "back to bed" instead of "back to the house." It was like she knew I wasn't going to be standing again.
Okay.
They fled, of ~ Kiera Cass

I really like to sometimes go into food detox and eat very simply. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Simply being born female in our society is to grow up being told your worth as a person is tied to how slim and attractive you are. Even for those of us lucky enough to have evolved parents, the message is still driven home by the world at large. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Hearing doctors tell you that you can't get pregnant does not extinguish the hope. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I've always thought the back is one of the most beautiful parts of a woman. I've created four versions of the front-to-back necklace which actually gives you two necklaces in one. I love the way they swing and catch the light as a woman is walking away. You almost want to pull on it and stop her! ~ Padma Lakshmi

The insidious reasons for a brown girl's self-loathing won't be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations - and what they mean about your worth - might not dawn on you while you're playing cricket in the sand. What's at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. ~ Padma Lakshmi

experienced a bout of atheism. With adolescent self-importance, I wondered why God would allow all this to happen to a fourteen-year-old girl. When ~ Padma Lakshmi

I feel the American's eyes on me, looking as though I'm more than an amputee, a number, a chore. He crosses over to me, his strides large, a broad smile on his lips. "Veda? Did I say your name right?" "Yes, Doctor." "Call me Jim. Please." His left hand in his pocket, he holds his right hand out to me. As though we're equals. "Thank you, Doctor - I mean - just Jim," I say. He chuckles. "Haven't done anything yet." He has. No older man ever invited me to shake hands. No other adult ever asked me to call them by name. He even said "please" although I'm a patient. ~ Padma Venkatraman

Because friendship is about laughing when the other person is joking to make you feel better. Even if you don't find her joke all that funny. ~ Padma Venkatraman

I love the word Quetzalcoatl.'
'The word!' he repeated.
His eyes laughed at her teasingly all the time.
'What do you think, Mrs Leslie,' cried the pale-faced young Mirabal, in curiously resonant English, with a French accent. 'Don't you think it would be wonderful if the gods came back to Mexico? our own gods?' He sat in intense expectation, his blue eyes fixed on Kate's face, his soup-spoon suspended.
Kate's face was baffled with incomprehension.
'Not those Aztec horrors!' she said.
'The Aztec horrors! The Aztec horrors! Well, perhaps they were not so horrible after all. But if they were, it was because the Aztecs were all tied up. They were in a cul de sac, so they saw nothing but death. Don't you think so?'
'I don't know enough!' said Kate.
'Nobody knows any more. But if you like the word Quetzalcoatl, don't you think it would be wonderful if he came back again? Ah, the names of the gods! Don't you think the names are like seeds, so full of magic, of the unexplored magic? Huitzilopochtli!--how wonderful! And Tlaloc! Ah! I love them! I say them over and over, like they say Mani padma Om! in Tibet. I believe in the fertility of sound. Itzpapalotl--the Obsidian Butterfly! Itzpapalotl! But say it, and you will see it does good to your soul. Itzpapalotl! Tezcatlipocá! They were old when the Spaniards came, they needed the bath of life again. But now, re-bathed in youth, how wonderful they must be! ~ D.H. Lawrence

I don't know how you live without dreams" -Viji ~ Padma Venkatraman

Ajna chakra, Kurma Chakra, Padma Chakars, MahaPadma chakra and the Shiva-Shakti Chakras are associated with Lord Shiva along with the Vishuddhi Chakra and the Muladhara chakra. ~ Amit Ray

I think a great classic watch is the first staple every woman should invest in. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I work out all the time! I don't just sit around and eat burgers whenever I want. Oh, if I could I probably would, but I don't. ~ Padma Lakshmi

How does the new leg feel?' I don't point out their question misses a point: even this new leg doesn't feel. ~ Padma Venkatraman

It feels like Shiva destroyed my universes of possibility, like He's dancing on the ashes of my snatched away dreams. ~ Padma Venkatraman

I am a sufferer of endometriosis. I didn't want any young women to go through what I went through. I thought that people should know about it. ~ Padma Lakshmi

In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I've always had a fantasy to write a cookbook, because everyone wants to know what a model eats. ~ Padma Lakshmi

She is a pebble skipping
over the surface of a lake.
As I once was.
Not a deep sinking stone that leaves widening ripples behind
after it's disappeared.
As I hope to be. ~ Padma Venkatraman

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the "endo-whatever," had stained so much - my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn't take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made.

I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive syst ~ Padma Lakshmi

At the end of a marriage, no one wins. There is only anger, sorrow, guilt, emptiness, and defeat. ~ Padma Lakshmi

One thing that happens when you're pregnant is that as your stomach starts to stretch. It itches! So I have to keep my belly really lubricated. Every morning, there's a buttering ceremony after I get out of the shower. It's really like basting a turkey with body butter. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I want to tell the nurses no scale can measure
the pain of my dreams
dancing
beyond reach. ~ Padma Venkatraman

The van lurches forward. My thoughts race back. ~ Padma Venkatraman

Every woman has a record of her body - a closet full of jeans and bras of various sizes, albums full of photographs revealing periods of weight gain and loss. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Well look, it seems as though you do have some experience now at least of threefold bliss, luminosity, and emptiness that is such an important feature of the first yoga. On top of that, you are in an excellent position, having had introduction from myself and having all the things on your side that you have going for you. But look out! Your mind is probably not strong enough yet that you can go wandering into town, as a lot of yogi-types would, drinking liquor and womanizing, and trying to incorporate that into your practice. Instead, and until you have advanced far enough that you can actually take these things onto the path, you should be practicising!

- Gampopa to Phagmo Drupa

(Duff T. Gampopa Teaches Essence Mahamudra: Interviews with His Heart Disciples, Dusum Khyenpa and Others. Padma Karpo Translation Committee, 2012. Pp. xxviii-xxix) ~ Tony Duff

I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Auguste Escoffier into what we now know as the five mother sauces of French cuisine. It's funny ~ Padma Lakshmi

In my mind's eye, my chess pieces had grown into lines of dark-skinned men marching forward, being beaten by a white army and crumpling one by one into my father's waiting arms, bloodstains blossoming across their shoulders. (32) ~ Padma Venkatraman

Ganesh: Mortals refuse most divine offers….But so few of you accept our gifts, even ones you have prayed for. ~ Padma Viswanathan

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I always think, after the second glass of wine, you should be putting something in your stomach. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I always loved my bangles, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a bangle on. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I didn't know what the future held in store for me, but I felt hopeful. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I tend to sleep in the nude ... I'm a sensual-leaning woman. You have to use the word 'leaning' or it sounds like I'm boasting. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Teddy taught me about kindness, about love that is unconditional; a sentiment not dependent on acceptance, approval, or the expectation of something in return. It was the first time I would ever feel this from a man who wasn't my grandfather. And I didn't know what to do with it at all. If only I'd embraced our differences sooner. I didn't know it then, but we had so little time left. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. "You should've told us," they'd say. "We would've helped you." You're not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you're not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven't starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident. ~ Padma Lakshmi

How to dispense with Padma? How give up her ignorance and superstition, necessary counterweights to my miracle-laden omniscience? How to do without her paradoxical earthiness of spirit, which keeps - kept! - my feet on the ground? I have become, it seems to me, the apex of an isosceles triangle, supported equally by twin deities, the wild god of memory and the lotus-goddess of the present … but must I now become reconciled to the narrow one-dimensionality of a straight line? ~ Salman Rushdie

The joyous clamor in my mind drowned out the strange sound outside the car: a humming noise that was gathering speed and growing louder, a roar that was not the waves curling up the beach. ~ Padma Venkatraman

From the simple stringing together of lemon garlands for the goddess Durga, to dividing the prasadam or blessed foods for the children first, I came to associate food not only with feminity, but also with purity and divinity. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I'm not tough. I'm tenacious. ~ Padma Lakshmi

My hand slips into his as though it remembers his touch and we've held hands often in a previous life. ~ Padma Venkatraman

I'm not of the American ilk that, you know, your lover needs to be your best friend and know you inside out. I think he should know you well enough to please you. Otherwise, what secret will there be to tell him when you're ninety? ~ Padma Lakshmi

The great thing about living today is that there is this thing called the Interweb, and you can just look up anything. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Commitment is easy before a relationship requires compromise and obligation. ~ Padma Lakshmi

In southern Spain, they made me eat a bull's testicles. They were really garlicky, which I don't like. I prefer to take a bull by the horns, not by, um ... ~ Padma Lakshmi

I grew up a vegetarian. Then, because I grew up in the states, I started slowly eating meat. First it was bologna sandwiches, or pepperoni on pizza. ~ Padma Lakshmi

The best thing you can do for someone is make them a beautiful plate of food. How else can you invade someone's body without actually touching them? ~ Padma Lakshmi

we eat for our stomachs, but we hunger with our hearts. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I'm the kind of girl who thinks about what she's gonna cook for dinner when she's finishing her lunch. ~ Padma Lakshmi

It is, after all, that old process which Katherine Mansfield once described as 'going out and looking at a tree and coming back plus the tree. ~ Padma Hejmadi

I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Flowers die and wine gets consumed. Both are lovely. I appreciate both. Wine and roses. I actually had someone bring me a lobe of foie gras once. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did professionally to gain money and status. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body. ~ Padma Lakshmi

The waste man didn't take everything we had" - Arul

He threaded my free hand through one of his and reach out for you with his other hand. ~ Padma Venkatraman

How can she explain to these children, whom she would never begrudge a blossom or two, that in the game of life there are two teams: rich and poor? That she and these children are on one team, and Padma is on the other. ~ Mathangi Subramanian

DON'T wear loud clanging bangles at work, it's disruptive and noisy and your coworkers won't appreciate it! Bangles should have a gentle wind-chimey tinkle, not the crash bang of a million pots and pans. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I am as omnivorous as it's possible to be. I always say there's nothing I won't eat and nothing I won't wear. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I paused, thinking of all the wonderful things she'd said - about my imagination and how smart I was - and how she'd encouraged us both. I realized the biggest gift she'd given me wasn't the book - it was something else.

She believed in me and Rukku" -Viji ~ Padma Venkatraman

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There's the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There's the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I'm the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don't get me wrong, I love - at least until I don't. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I lean into his touch. He looks shy and almost as scared as I was just feeling. I burst out laughing. Never imagined we'd share being scared the first time we went out together. "What's so funny now?" "You. You look so frightened." "I am frightened." He exhales. Then smiles and slides closer to me. ~ Padma Venkatraman

Jim was cricket practice; Govinda's the real match. Match. Get it? ~ Padma Venkatraman

If a dog barks at the sun, it does not dim the sun's brightness. (44) ~ Padma Venkatraman

She raised her hand, bony fingers spread. "Don't worry. She is supposed to cry. Her life will never be the same. You can't give her everything."

I realized what Rajima meant. Until that moment, I had been almost exclusively providing everything Krishna could want or need. I was her sole succor and haven. But her needs were changing. She would now need sustenance from the earth, from Mother Nature, from the world, or at least Whole Foods. She would need more than what I could give her from my own body. We ~ Padma Lakshmi

I didn't wholly identify with the collective experiences of children in either place. I had one foot in each culture, but no firm footing in either of them. At ~ Padma Lakshmi

And this charge plays out with partners, parents, friends, families and even our children. Many parents unconsciously 'use' their children so the parent can feel loved, important, special, and needed under the mask of being unconditionally loving to their children. The parent needs the child in order for the parent to feel love. This need is not love, simply another excuse for the parent to not feel their own lack and wound, and of course when the child acts up and does not meet their expectations, then the child receives harmful projections and verbal and physical abuse. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha

I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise. ~ Padma Lakshmi

And so I was left with a mantra, a sort of haiku version of our relationship: I don't regret one day I spent with him, nor did I leave a moment too soon. ~ Padma Lakshmi

For a while, I became an atheist; now that I'm grown up, though, I'm not hard-edged enough to be an atheist. Even though I live with a flaming atheist, I love going to temple. I love all the rituals. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I think eating in itself is the act of great sensuality, so all you have to do is point the camera in the right direction. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Like many immigrants, I had always kept my Eastern and Western lives compartmentalized. ~ Padma Lakshmi

People always comment about my clothes. They don't think a fashionable woman can love food and be knowledgeable and actually cook. ~ Padma Lakshmi

My first taste memory is pickle. Even as a kid, I was really weird. I liked chillis. I used to climb up the shelves in my grandmother's pantry. The pickle jar was kept right at the top. One time, I dropped the jar and it broke. I was totally busted. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I don't have any stigma attached to my body. When I'm in my own private space, I have very little on. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I'm not attached to things at all. I'm very lucky to have quite a few beautiful things, but if I look back at my life, I was often happiest when I had very little. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I once asked her if she was happy. "That depends on what I am able to get done today," she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: "I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?" "I don't know," she said uncomfortably, as if she'd never really considered such a question. "When there is little you can do, you do what you can." Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Is he your only child? I asked, "my only son" padma said. "My condolences" I said ... Anita Blake ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

For all those who are interested in the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, esthetic, historical or any other aspects of our dance art ... It is high time that our universities had faculties for dance, giving the art its due place in the academic world. ~ Padma Subrahmanyam

I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian. ~ Padma Lakshmi

Do not let us suppose that if we weep a great deal we have done everything that matters; let us also work hard and practise the virtues, for these are what we most need. Let the tears come when God is pleased to send them: we ourselves should make no efforts to induce them. They will leave this dry ground of ours well watered and will be of great help in producing fruit; but the less notice we take of them, the more they will do, because they are the water which comes from Heaven. When we ourselves draw water, we tire ourselves by digging for it, and the water we get is not the same; often we dig till we wear ourselves out without having discovered so much as a pool of water, still less a wellspring. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha

I never Tweet about my daughter. Never. I just want to be respectful of her privacy. My job as a mom is to know when to open my mouth and when not to. ~ Padma Lakshmi

My skin tingles as I step into the music,
give in to the icy thrill of pleasure
that spreads through me whenever I dance,
the pleasure of leaping into a cool lake on a
sweltering day. ~ Padma Venkatraman

Beauty is no accomplishment on its own. It's what you do with it. ~ Padma Lakshmi

During the course of filming 'Top Chef,' I gain 15 lbs., so I'm used to needing two dress sizes. ~ Padma Lakshmi

You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I can dance beauty into my body ~ Padma Venkatraman

Everytime I climbed the stairs, my heart lifted. ~ Padma Venkatraman

The sound did not hide the void, but it filled it with a kind of light: nothing that would stop you from falling, but maybe stop you from being so afraid. ~ Padma Viswanathan

She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. I ~ Padma Lakshmi

went from hoping things would work out to seeing that they were working out. I am actually doing this, I thought. Maybe I'm not just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't want to be passive anymore, personally or professionally. In that moment, I came into being as my real and present professional self. ~ Padma Lakshmi