Instead, he taught her about cosmetics. For a week, Nala was made to sit as one of the initiates of Agni, the God of Fire, clad in orange, trying to look suitably poor and pathetic. Parshuram taught her how to use pastes and dyes to mask her vitiligo and change her disguise. Passersby dropped coins into her worn sack and prayers poured from them like a waterfall: one asked to be rich, another prayed for forgiveness for burning his neighbour’s crops; yet another for fucking her neighbour’s husband; many women wished for sons, but one asked for her son to die.

Still, the moment of redemption did not come. Sometimes, Nala felt Parshuram kept her for his own entertainment, especially when he ensured she got into trouble during her tasks. She always needed to have a worthy tale at hand to explain why she was stealing the undergarments of the boatsman’s son or why she had released a host of mice into the local granaries. Needless to say, no lies were ever worthy enough. Once she was caught by the villagers and whipped till her back was lacerated. But Parshuram had just stood and watched.

Pranks were not the only games Parshuram liked to play. He had Nala talk to people. He would sometimes send her to the blacksmith to ask whether the steel imports that year were leaner than last year, or to the port to discover the tariff on mountain fish. Or to the temple to discover which God had received the highest donations that quarter. She was asked to head to the lakes when the thaw came and the houseboats resumed commerce, to chat up tourists and boatmen alike.

But she was growing tired of all this. The Art of the Sun began to look extremely attractive from where she stood now, but what could she do? Disobey Parshuram and break her Vachan? Unthinkable. At least all this talking to people allowed her to make a few friends, from the leathery skinned boatman to the old corn-seller. She gossiped often with the lady who sold lotus roots at one of the floating gardens on the lake. The woman’s children liked to play with Nala as well, and confided their secrets to her. She began to notice how she was apparently considered trustworthy because she was maimed, invisible and non-existent. She was never considered an intrusion when she cleaned the tables where traders gathered to gossip over hookah or warm kasmira tea. Even in the local whorehouse, no client batted an eyelid in her direction when she entered through the doors with wares to sell, not unless they were curious about the white stripes on her face.

It was as if she had turned invisible for the world.

VI

‘Stop crying.’

It was only then that Nala realized her eyes were swimming. She wiped them, ashamed. Sniffing, she turned to make the evening tea.

‘What is it, Nala? Onions?’