My first short story, written in the first lockdown.

Manusmriti: In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.

       Acrid fumes crawled up my nose and through my parted lips, clawing at my throat to settle in my lungs. The already hazy sky was clouded from the smoke, and the burnt orange reflected in the Ganges. I gazed up. Despite the heat from the burning body, my sister, a shiver jumped from one pedicle of my spine to another, working its way up to my neck and dissipating down my shoulders and around my skull like a whisper. The already rancid stench of the Ganges mixed with the thick putrid odour escaping the fire could make anyone’s stomach turn, but it seemed in bad taste to gag at my sister’s cremation. Despite this, it was beautiful. It always was. I was fascinated with the way death took away a wink, a snaggletooth smile, or a raised eyebrow. All the quirks of a face that reminded you how someone’s soul looked and felt. Maybe that’s why grief aches, knowing no one will or could ever look at you the way that person once did.
          My sister had one of those brilliantly expressive faces, the ones you can’t help but mimic during conversation. Her eyes seemed to widen with every syllable her mouth wove together, until they were so huge and brown and deep you would completely lose what you were going to say next. I loved watching this happen with the nervous schoolboys in our village, and how she revelled in the control. Her strong eyebrows were centred with a single red dot, and she was fierce, but never with me. This ritual of death honours a person, yet the disappointment among the family that were watching was palpable. You could have left us a boy before you choked it. I knew they were more disappointed by that rather than her death, and it made a bitter taste fill my mouth and bile rise up my throat.
            The red of the fire swept through my thoughts and lit up various memories of my sister, so I revisited the most prominent. I was 11, my sister 15, when we attended our first wedding. It was one of those days that seem to escape you, as you grow older; untouchable from the everyday trivialities of adulthood. We spent the morning painting ourselves in rich henna, and stringing blood red flowers and sunset coloured beads round and round our slender necks and arms. We were being women, an idea so far away from us in our bubble of androgynous adventure, where set expectations were absent from our wild games and the dreams we whispered to each other. I gazed in awe at my picture book princess cousin, and couldn’t help but wish the time away until I was being showered in gifts with a devoted husband holding my hand. I assumed my sister was in the same state of wonder as myself, for her countenance was equally as intense. However, soon I felt the digging of her nails in the soft flesh of my wrist. She hauled me up and began to run. I knew where but not why.
            A few months ago she decided we needed somewhere to hide, I wasn’t sure why, but enjoyed our new project. We built a little hut in the middle of a summer heatwave. Slaving away gathering armfuls of waste from the neighbouring farm, and squidging them to together into an igloo shape until the sun baked it into hard clay. So here we were, she hadn’t let go of my wrist, so as she sat I followed, mud and dust browning the ends of our sarees, and the dirt from the ground sticking to our clammy skin. I was so preoccupied with picking off the bigger clumps of earth and flicking them to the floor, that my sister’s fierce intent went unnoticed.
          Her eyes swallowed mine, and she whispered coarsely, ‘Promise me you will never do what our cousin has just done.’ I let out a stifled giggle, I don’t often see my sister this stern and it seemed ridiculous. We’ve always wanted to marry. I must have looked baffled, as her face didn’t falter, and she continued to explain herself, ‘I don’t know how it happens, but you become weak as soon as you’re married, and it only gets worse after having babies.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Haven’t you noticed? Auntie, Mother… our cousin? They barely leave the house, and when they do they’re always, always with their husbands, or sons. They’re different to us, they don’t run, they barely laugh. Have you ever even heard Auntie talk about anything other than her house?’
I had noticed this, but just thought they were adults and that’s what happened, although I did see Father running, and he was always smiling and joking with his friends. A new fear spread through my 11-year-old mind.
‘Do you think they’re being poisoned?’ Her face softened, and she replied,
“Maybe. I don’t know. Just promise me, and I’ll promise you. We really don’t need to get married.” She looked in earnest at me and lifted her hand from the clay mud, thrusting her little finger in my face. “We’ve got eachother anyway, jaan” she breathed with a charismatic wink that diffused any doubt I felt, so I linked my little finger with hers and that was that.       
             As we grew older I often thought about that conversation, and how it only became more prevalent. I knew I wanted to bear children and fall in love, but I also couldn’t help but notice how it changed people. Old friends who used to run in the dirt with us, graze knees and tell secrets, were now confined to their houses, and the quirks in their faces that reminded me how their soul looked seemed to have disappeared. They hadn’t died, but they had lost themselves in some way. The more time that passed the more I understood what was expected of being a woman, and sooner or later we would have to break our promise. However, the closer I observed this, the stronger I felt the need to keep it: if I was to complete my duty then surely I would lose my own face, my own soul. This thought would terrify me, and without knowing what it was that was making these women weak, I couldn’t figure out whether I could solve it or not. Around the same time as these thoughts were congealing into a confusing mess, I started my period. I hid it for months, stuffing whatever I could find down my pants to soak up the dark blood, old socks, handkerchiefs, kitchen napkins, and spending most of that dreaded week in our hut.
           Obviously, my family eventually realised and excited themselves about the prospect of me becoming a woman, introducing me to expectant men as I stood around, awkwardly. My sister married, a man named Aadesh, and my anger and contempt for our sex grew. She had inevitably broken her promise. What puzzled me was the conflict in myself. I often felt a yearning to cradle a baby, and I thought a lot about what being a mother meant. I realised I could grow a life within me, a life that could promise unconditional love and trust. Surely this would show that I wasn’t inferior? Growing a baby in only my body would show I was independent. Caring for and protecting another person for the rest of my life would show I was strong and capable. Yet it seemed ‘being a woman’ just meant bearing children, and once successful resigning ourselves to being looked after by the men in our weak state? I wanted children, but I also wanted to keep living. I would ponder this for hours, staying awake worrying that my sister would lose herself, and then I would lose her.   
             I couldn’t help but feel an odd sense of honour each time my period came. I was fascinated with the way my body, the body I had known for 14 years, transformed every month. I loved observing the slow swelling and tenderness of my breasts, and how heavy they felt placed on my chest, like a physical manifestation of pride. I would find amusement in what made the constant lump in my throat grow until tears pricked my eyes; a beetle stuck on its back, my sister’s smile, a meal cooked by my mother. I was vulnerable, and it’s valuable to be vulnerable, because I grow and learn more and more with every month that passes. The dull pounding ache in my stomach felt like it radiated into my kneecaps and thighs in an all-encompassing pain, unlike any I had felt before. Even on those nights of agony there was a satisfaction of knowing the feeling was exclusive to my sex, I overcome this pain like no man could. On those nights a kind of red-hot fury would burn my thoughts, because this battle we fought every month without defeat wasn’t to be spoken of, and I wasn’t celebrated for being strong, but rather mocked for being vulnerable.
            I began to recognize in school that there were innate differences in men and women. Their voices were louder, so people tended to hear them first. They seemed stronger, although this was unfair as they were always encouraged to play sports while the girls were to watch passively. They could walk on their own whenever they wanted to, so they could take extra classes, even when it was dark. Where I couldn’t even run for class leader because we were discouraged to look boys in the eye, so my speeches seemed shy and nervous. Eventually I was dismissed from school. It was pretty vague, but they said something about taking up a new caring role for family members and that I had basically got as far as I could. No one questioned it, and I was just 14, so that was it. I discussed these ideas with a few of my friends, but they just seemed excited to stay home, so I gave up. I also tried my sister, but in reply all she could muster was a pitying look. Already I could see the tell tale symptoms of whatever it was that was starting to suck the life out of her. She would just shake her head, slowly and solemnly, and then dismiss me, although I could see that glimmer behind her eyes, and I swear she was trying to talk to me and encourage me… like she was in a battle with something in her own body. I almost expected some sort of horrid exorcism, something alien to leave her at which point she would let out a sigh and say ‘Thank god! Now let’s talk.” And all her previous fire would light her eyes and her cheeks would grow rouge again.
          As I expected, a few years later my sister fell pregnant. A sliver of resentment grew between us, as the broken promise went unspoken. I’m not sure when it happened, but one day I just knew that there wasn’t really anything that took life away from us, and those ideas of aliens and exorcisms soon became childish in my mind. Women became weaker because men were stronger, in their eyes. Again, I was conflicted because every time I saw her beautifully curved, full stomach, and her strong legs carrying the extra weight as she continued to clean and cook, a fizzing bubble of pure pride stirred within me, rising to my throat and settling, making it impossible to speak without my voice cracking and tears streaming. However, the fear of losing her to her husband, or possible sons, still plagued me.
          As time passed, and we waited for labour, I already felt a powerful surge of maternal instinct to protect my sister’s offspring with whatever I could. It was such a powerful determination that it felt like it twisted my insides with a lovely sweet pain. Maybe it was because my sister and I were now connected by something deeper, a new celebration of our sex, sharing the knowledge that she would create something that had our blood running through its veins, quenching the thirst of its heart. I marveled at this, and our favourite past time became dreaming of the days where we would hear it’s first mumblings, coo at its first stumbled steps and watch another human, that she grew inside her, grow in front of us. During this time we weren’t weak.
            It was a difficult birth. Her slender, 19-year-old body struggled with the contractions and convulsions, contorting itself into animalistic shapes to eventually birth a beautiful little girl. The baby’s head came out dappled with tiny coffee curls, the same huge eyes as her mother, and plump little lips with the perfect cupid’s bow. My sister bent down, kissed her all over, like a dog licking her pups, then lay back closing her eyes. And died. Death had gracefully taken her away. No scream or struggle, not even last words. She had simply drifted away, out of reach, like a twig resting on a swelling sea slowly tugged away by the tide, until you can’t quite distinguish whether it is still the same twig or a small breaking wave, or the head of a jagged rock, or a clump of seaweed. Unrecognisable now. A death in vain because the little girl was no longer protected.

So now I stood by her burning body, as the flickering flames licked my salty eyes, empty in the knowledge that I would never see the baby, or my sister, again. I looked at my own swelling stomach, and hoped it was a boy.