Page 54 of The Henna Artist

As guests made themselves comfortable and soft-voiced conversations continued, the priest began dropping laurel leaves into the clay pot ofghee. He then lit them with a match, and prodded the flame. Without skipping a beat in his repetitions ofOm Ganapati Namah, he pointed to the virgin incense stub, and one of his assistants hurried to light it. The unexpected combination of scorching camphor,gheeand sandalwood was musky, sweet, bitter and rich at the same time—the scents of past ceremonies, long forgotten.

I thought of my marriage years ago, the hasty ritual, thepanditcomplaining that he could barely afford thegheewith the fee he was being offered. Nochuraceremony for my uncles to slide bangles on my arm and give me money, for I had no uncles. Pitaji struggling to stay upright, the yellows of his eyes red-veined from drink. Maa shooing flies from the meager platters ofpilao, samosas, subjisand sweets.

With my red wedding sari shielding my face, I’d cried and cried, amazed I still had tears left after arguing with Maa for five straight days:Did Maa not need me to help to teach the school when Pitaji was absent? Was fifteen so very old to still be at home? Who would roast and grind the gram after I left? Who would bring water from the well?

Maa was gentle, but firm. She was brought up to obey her parents and her husband, not to defy, question or contradict. She told me Pitaji’s books had filled my head with too many silly ideas. They had given me the useless notion that I could make my own decisions. As a daughter, my job was to marry the man my parents chose for me, as she had. She was as powerless to change that age-old tradition as I was. Besides, there was no money to keep me at home.

I glanced at Maa’s neck, where her gold chain used to hang and where the groove it had carved would always be a reminder of what she had sacrificed, and knew that to be true.

But I also knew that as soon as I married, I would becomejaaya—my husband taking birth in my womb in the form of future children. And once there were children, there would be no moreIorme, onlyweandthem. So often I’d begged my namesake, the goddess Lakshmi, to hear my pleas—I’m hungry for the knowledge of three Swaraswatis! Let me see the wider world before shutting me inside a small life.But, as always, she’d held up her delicate hands in apology:It’s the way it has always been.

It would have been so much sweeter to share today’s ceremony with my parents. I would have seated them in the place of pride—in the front of thepandit—and introduced them to my guests, fed them richburfiwith my own hands, cooled their faces withkhus-khusfans—

The rustling beside me brought me back to the ceremony. Radha was holding achunnito her nose as if the fragrance of the altar was too strong. She rose, weaving toward the privy. It was the third time in an hour she had done so.

Malik met her as she came out, whispered in her ear, then ran to themutkito get her a drink of water. It was only April, but she was fanning her face as if the heat were unbearable. Malik handed her the tumbler. She took a sip and blanched. I blamed myself. The packing and cleaning of the last few days, school, the chores for our henna business—it had been too much for her.

When she returned to her seat, I noticed she’d rinsed her face—the tendrils on her forehead were damp and her cheeks pink. She looked so different from the dusty, hollow-cheeked girl I’d first met just six months ago. Now, her face looked as ripe as a mango in June. She even carried herself differently—shoulders back, neck long. She walked with a surer step. The pageboy suited her oval face. Her village diction was less noticeable; she’d dropped double words likesmall-smallandfar-far. The other day she used a word—what was it?Antediluvian?—andIhad to askherthe definition. It made me proud—how easily she picked things up.

Pandit-jipoured sesame seeds, whole wheat and red paste into the small fire, dousing it. Smoke curled up into the open sky. He wrapped banana leaves around the warm pot, and turned to hand it to me. But I nodded at Radha. I knew she would enjoy being the bearer. She bit her lower lip and smiled shyly as she lifted the pot to her head. Then she rose carefully and went into the empty house to disinfect and purify it.

She was wearing one of the frocks Kanta had ordered for her, a lighter-than-a-feather chiffon with a slim-fitting bodice. Kanta said, “It’s an exact copy of what Madhubala wore inMr. and Mrs. 55. I had the tailor weave gold chains into the waist, just like the dress in the movie.”

Radha’s breasts were straining against the fabric. She grimaced now and then, as if the binding were too tight. Her hips, which had been slim as a boy’s when I first met her, swayed as she walked. I watched the faces of the guests and was shocked to see the men taking notice, their eyes following the movement of her buttocks. She was only thirteen! But when I turned to look at her, I had to admit she seemed far older.

I watched the holy assistants circle the main room and the courtyard three times with red thread, starting from the east, while thepanditsprinkled holy water around the area. Then he lowered a clay container filled with grain and red flowers into the pit Malik had dug in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Now that we had fed the gods and asked them to watch over the house and protect us from evil intentions, the house, and its inhabitants, were safe from harm.

Until a move-in ceremony was finished, the house had to be free of all our possessions, so the driver of the camel cart had waited patiently with our carriers and trunks in front of the house. After the guests left, Malik’s friends (who had also been invited to the move-in festivities) carried everything inside the house. I told Malik he looked tired and should go home; Radha and I would clean up. Pleased that the ceremony had been such a success (thepanditstayed three hours), Malik left with his pals (and the leftover sweets).

Eager to settle in, I began unpacking the first trunk and stacking our clothes on the built-in shelves. I asked Radha to organize our kitchen. She bent over the other trunk, turned and bolted out of the room. I could hear her retching in the privy. When she returned, I asked if she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her.

She shook her head and headed for thecharpoy. “If I can just lie down for a few minutes...” Within seconds, she was asleep.

Poor thing. Her days were so full now that she often nodded off at dinner. I decided to finish arranging our clothes. When that was done, I started to set up the kitchen, pulling out pots, stainless steel plates, cups and glasses from the trunk. The carriers stuffed with odds and ends would have to wait until tomorrow. Satisfied, I glanced around the room.

Radha still had not stirred. I walked to the cot in the corner of the room to admire my sleeping sister. The Madhubala dress stretched across her rounded hips. Her hair gleamed with coconut oil. Her skin glowed. She didn’t look sick; she looked peaceful, content. Perhaps I should make her some ginger and honey water. It always worked wonders for women who suffered from nausea early in their pregnancy.

The word started as a tingling in my ear, slid down my throat and snaked into my spine. Radha was nauseous. Her breasts were tender. She was always tired. I remembered her telling me she had already started her menses. Could she bepregnant?

Whom had she been with? She went to agirl’sschool—she didn’t know any boys. Malik was too young. There was Manu, Kanta’s husband, but I couldn’t imagine he would take advantage of her. Mr. Iyengar? Baju? Who?

The answer landed on my heart like a thousand-pound Brahma bull.

I reached the Pink City Bazaar. The air reeked of stale cooking oil, rotting vegetables, diesel exhaust.

I found Malik sitting on a low wall across from his favoritechaatstall, sharing a Red and White with his friends (English cigarettes were more expensive than Indianbeedis, and ever since he’d started going to the palace, Malik’s tastes had become more refined).

He was describing to his friends some dish Chef had prepared for him the last time he was at the maharinis’ palace. When he noticed me, he stopped midsentence.

I must have resembled a cheetah on the prowl—wild, dangerous. One side of my hair had come loose from my bun. My sari was wrinkled from unpacking, bending, squatting, rearranging. My eyes blazed with anger.

Malik jumped off the wall and gave the almost-finished Red and White to another urchin. “Auntie-Boss?” he said.

“Can you take me to Hari?”

We zigzagged down narrow streets, Malik stopping at a tea stall or apaanstand to ask the proprietors if they had seen Hari. The chai-wallasand their customers stared at me. I stared back. We rushed past a woman in the Refugee Market who’d set up shop at the edge of the street. She was sitting on a piece of cotton cloth, her shoe repair tools lined up neatly. She eyed my sandals and said, “Ji, your straps are coming loose.”

We came to a nondescript building that, like the others, had been decorated decades earlier in pink plaster. Shops took up the bottom floor. In one, a man patched a large inner tube. In another, a tailor haggled with a customer while his two male assistants, bent over tiny sewing machines, worked in the faint light of a bare bulb. Next came a busylassivendor. Men loitered in front of his shop, talking and laughing, carelessly discarding their empty clay tumblers in the ditch by the road.

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