Dedicated to my sisters, related through blood and soul: Robina, Farzana, Teng Teng, Rossi, Famiza, Eliza, Faiza, Zaynah, Shaina, Aliyah, Yashaswi, Jane, Janet, Arifa bubu, Ashreena bubu, Ashma bubu, Wahfiqa, Hina, Maureen bubu, and Jasdeep

This work contains themes of sexual and physical violence.

Reader discretion is advised

Epigraph

Four more minutes and I would have been lost.

My sorrow

would have consumed me entirely.

As it is, I realized upon a blink

before the credits rolled.

This is not how I want my story to end.

—PAHELI, The Book of Memories

Once upon a midday marked by the blooms of pink and purple bougainvillea, she was born.

They named her Paheli. A riddle.

And she was.

And she is.

And may she always be.

A few words of caution before Paheli tells us her story. We would have you know that the tale she weaves may be true or it may be a lie. Or it may be a khatta meetha, sweet and sour, mixture of both.

We don’t know.

What we do know is that every story has a beginning. And this is ours.

The Beginning, or How Paheli Became the First Wild One; With a Cameo by Taraana, the Boy Made of Stars.

I lived a life of spark and charm (false, of course) and (manufactured) wit and splendor. I lived my life on my toes, on a precipice, poised to fall. And fall I did.

But let me begin at the beginning.

My mother was a whore. Not a tawaif as she aspired to be, but a whore. Men visited my mother’s body as though it was a city they were supposed to conquer. I don’t know what circumstances led her to this profession, and she never volunteered the information.

She named me Paheli because she said I was a mystery. Whether I was a result of a yearning or a moment of weakness, she wouldn’t say, and over time I learned not to ask.

I know nothing of my father. No… that is not quite true. My eyes are the blue of Afghani skies like his must be. My skin is a deep brown like the earth after its first sip of rain. My mother’s skin is the color of day-old dough.

We lived in the City of Nawabs in India. Now Lucknow, back then it was known as Awadh. It wasn’t just the city of nawabs, however; it was also the city of tawaifs. What my mother wasn’t but what she wanted to be so desperately.

I remember the smells of the kotha. The first floor was rank with the smell of cheap perfume the first-floor whores applied liberally. The aroma of food emanating from the kitchens vied with the stench of the refuse that waited for attention right outside the back doors. Below all this was another scent, one that I now associate with despair.