‘I am going to tell my daddy.’

‘Hush, you cannot do that. Your daddy works so hard, he slogs for all of us, do you want to upset him?’

‘My daddy will stop him.’

‘Then there will be a fight in the family and your daddy will have to leave the house and the shop. Who will feed your sisters then? It will be all your fault for not being sensible about it.’

The joys of a joint family.

She is running, she is running. From those hands which latch on to her buttocks like leeches as she silently struggles.

She is ten and she knows somewhat about these things. But she is still not prepared for the biggest, blackest pool of blood on the cracked, white tiles of the bathroom floor. The blood soaks her fingers like oil, she has begun menstruating.

Dadi sniffs, ‘Too early, just ten and she has got her monthlies. Now we will have to get her married even sooner, or God knows what new ways she will find to embarrass the family.’ Dadi begins tearing strips from an old, thick bed sheet, ‘Here, you can use these.’

‘I am not going to use that horrible material.’

‘Achcha, you want silk I suppose, or should I get you velvet?’

‘I want what they give ma in the hospital after the babies come.’

‘That costs money, so much money every month.’

‘Is it my fault that this has happened?’

‘Nothing is a woman’s fault. And everything is a woman’s fault.’ As she says this, Dadi’s smile looks like it is in pain.

‘Am not a woman! I am a girl.’

‘Now you are a woman.’

Mummy explains to her how the babies will come out when she gets married. Husbands and wives make babies like this, mummy draws diagrams in curlicues and trellises, all mehndi-like patterns. She stares at them.

‘What is a husband, ma?’

‘A husband is the man whom you marry. Your daddy is my husband, I am his wife.’

‘No ma, I am not asking this, I know this much. Who is a husband?’

‘What do you mean, who is a husband?’

She feels confusion, she gropes for the words. ‘Is my chacha my husband?’

‘Silly girl, how can your daddy’s brother be your husband? He is like your daddy, he is part of our family. Your husband will be a man from another family, he will not be as old as the men in your family.’

Suddenly she feels acutely sick, not just sick to her stomach but also in a deep, bone-and-muscle way.

And then her uterus begins mocking her. Every twenty-three days it twists and tortures, it makes sure that the pain tears right through her to remind her that she has to run.

Fast. Faster. Fastest. From those fingers with their nails cut in semi-moons, those fingers which flash out of nowhere, and shape themselves conically, to measure her growing breasts.

This is going to happen very often in her life, but she does not know it as yet. Whenever God decides to protect her, in exchange he takes away something that is special to her.