What do I tell you of the evenings at the kotha, sisters? I used to slip under a table set on the side in the central courtyard and peek out from behind the overhanging tablecloth at the spectacles that unfolded there every evening. The evening gatherings, the mehfils, were filled with color; each tawaif was dressed in bejeweled finery, and glowing with life and laughter. The sweetness of the ghazals they sang enraptured me. I was too young to appreciate the sly wit in the banter the tawaifs and the nawabs shared; too young, at first, to understand the incomprehensible whispering between two hearts that people fancifully called romance. The nawabs who frequented the kotha were peacocks; knowing that their money alone wasn’t enough to attract attention, they seduced as much as they were seduced.

I would fall asleep under the table and wake only when I could no longer hear the bells of the ghungroo the tawaifs wore to dance.

The city outside the walls of the kotha was unknown to me and would remain so until the year I turned sixteen. My mother had been trying to get the Malkin to take me on as a tawaif-in-training but to no avail. My skin wasn’t fair enough, the Malkin said. I was fiercely glad. My mother’s ambitions for me aside, I had no plans on whoring myself. I didn’t know what I planned to do with my life, but I knew with a certainty that my mother’s trade was not for me.

Not that my desires meant much to my mother. My blue eyes were a ticket she meant to use to elevate her status. So, she sent me, ostensibly on errands, to the tawaifs’ domain, hoping I would run into a nawab and gain his interest. But I subverted her commands at each point. If I couldn’t avoid being in the presence of the nawabs, I would wear my most mulish expression and keep my eyes cast down. Would you look at a dandelion in a field of orchids? They didn’t either.

I only let my guard down once and only for half a second. I thought I was safe; I thought that no one was around. I should have been safe.

It was early in the morning when the denizens of the kotha were all asleep. I had spent the night under a table again, though at sixteen I was a bit too large to properly fit under there. The courtyard was lit dimly by a few glass lamps scattered here and there. I walked, rubbing my eyes, not seeing where I was going, and kicked a ghungroo that had been lying on the floor. I picked it up and shook it, smiling at the sound it made.