“It is always the same story: children go out to play, a safe distance from the deep forest, and then one or more fail to return.”
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“Your mother will cry and blame her husband, her naseeb, her God, but you mustn’t take notice of her wails and complaints.”
“Dakini burped and looked at Nandini. “My mother’s a witch,” she whispered.”
“Your daughter is fair, like doodh malai. My Usman had to fall in love with that dark witch. Aah, my wretched luck,” she wipes the sewage-green goo trickling down her eyes. It sticks and spreads across her cheeks. “What have I done to deserve all this? All that is left is for lightning to strike me at this moment.”
“Screams were part of the natural soundscape of this Bazaar, this odd blink of a place that sat squat and sprawling beneath the sewers of Crimson City. Here, the holy gloss of the City’s lacy streets was absent. Here, the glistening towers and benevolent gods gave way to smugglers who sold pestilence and madams who entrapped demons.”
Each night Leela screams but no sound broadcasts. Each night presses its flesh into the cavity that
once was Leela. Each night blooms into an ordinary day.
Tears brimmed with surprising speed. He was my child. He was tangled into me. His name, his cry, his colic, his anger, his thieving, his running away, his wildness—all tangled into me.
In another world, death happened and the stars kept shining, the sun rose and set, the rain fell at the designated time, and dried soon after. Anything out of the ordinary was just that, an aberration that must be shoved under the carpet. But my mother’s death was different; the world had cracked open with us.
“..word of my infamy had reached all ears among the Scholars, as had my frustrated vociferations when asked by kindly, wispy-haired professors why my work could not keep to the standards of my peers. (‘My work is wholly original and inventive, far superior to the derivative schlock or regurgitated waste those you applaud produce.’)”