A girl in Delhi has a brilliant mind and secrets darker than the nights that won't let her eyes close.
She lives in the Labyrinth, a place that always seems dim, even in the middle of the day. There, customers flock in their dozens, and there, th...
Ουπς! Αυτή η εικόνα δεν ακολουθεί τους κανόνες περιεχομένου. Για να συνεχίσεις με την δημοσίευση, παρακαλώ αφαίρεσε την ή ανέβασε διαφορετική εικόνα.
Her wrinkles, stories in skin, travel her smile. She wears a koti splashed with floral design. A brooch on her lapel says "liberate" in Hindi.
"Radnya." Her voice is lavender. "Honesty is important today. Other days the truth might not seem so important, but today it is very important."
Walls appear to loom higher than they should. The ceiling hums with rectangles of light flashing back at themselves, replicated in a floor glossier than china.
"Radnya," she commands again, does not relent.
Her brow remembers her choice expressions in its lines. She agonizes after the downtrodden, and empathy marks her appearance down to her very posture, always open, never cross-armed.
On the window glisten dots of rain like baby marbles. Noon is bipolar and dwindles between temperatures. It may even rain again before the heat returns to collect its hourly fee, blazing so fanatically the rocks begin to fry and humidity threatens to smother whoever is not in the shade. Pariah dogs pant, their bubblegum tongues dangling as the mongrels scurry from the underside of one parked car to that of another. Rainwater sizzles on the concrete.
Across from the woman with the wrinkles, the koti, and the brooch, there sits a girl of nineteen. The girl holds her head low, her wrists crossed over her lap. She raises her eyes but not her chin.
Twenty hours earlier, this girl—sandwiched between two persons much larger than she—rode the train alone. She picked at a dark scab on her elbow. You are not supposed to pester a wound, she remembered, yet her thumbnail persisted.
Her silky jet-black curls, her personal midnight, hid her from assessment. Passengers joggled because the line of rails must have gone askew, knobbed like ancient vertebrae that connected terminals to districts. She touched her right ear and whimpered, twisting her shoeless toes. She had felt her helix and found it moist, her fingers returning with some blood but mostly clear fluid.
Men hung onto each side of the train. She could see them through every window, their hair flurrying, and she was happy to be in her seat. The tracks whined, perhaps bending from the sheer weight of the railroad cars. Would the train burst from so many inside?
It wheezed to a crawl, and she exited after all others had exited so she could know she was not being followed. The crowd was vibrant—a panorama of jade, orange, pink. Schoolchildren studied while they walked, notebooks flapping like brisk birds, textbooks tucked variously into armpits and necks, papers overflowing from bags. Two boys with knapsacks nearly their size and shiny slender arms peddled miscellaneous items: picture frames, disposable cameras, smartphone cases, Ethernet cables, key chains, cap guns.
Prithviraj waited for the girl.
She sensed him before she saw him, the laser beams of his eyes scanning face after face to find hers, and she knew she shall move toward his eyes, though she thought it might be possible to run from them. She had been the fastest in her village once, not many years ago, could outpace even joggers. Now it seems every day she is reminding herself that she must never run from anyone, no matter how badly the bones in her legs plead with her. Legs cannot in fact plead. They are only legs and haven't minds of their own.
