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So I have four daughters, about ten granddaughters, and five grandsons.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Life changes when you have a child, when you have your own family. You become more careful about what you do. You're not going to be out late, going out to clubs, hanging out with your friends. You're going to be at home, taking care of your daughter, playing with her.

Mothers, stay close to your daughters. Earn and deserve their love and respect. Be united with their father in the rearing of your children. Do nothing in your life to cause your daughters to stumble because of your example.

Children make you a better everything. Daughters open up a whole different sensibility to you. When you have children, it focuses you on them as opposed to on yourself.

Four of my children are daughters, and I've watched them devote themselves to reading books about how little girls learn to become women - how they learn to deal with boys and men, and the different hurdles females have to go over.

In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at all desirable. They are trouble. And a mother who, as mine did, has three daughters, no sons, is supposed to go and hang herself, kill herself, because it is such an unlucky kind of motherhood to have.