Haldi

Vani can’t feel her hands anymore. They belong to the artist now, her scrutiny as petrifying as Medusa’s serpents while henna glides across her palms. Once cool and wet in the pre-monsoon heat, the paste now renders to stone, the foundations still flimsy beneath the hardened top layer. It is an apt metaphor of the marriage she finds herself in.

Vani knows she can grow to love her husband. It is a good marriage on paper, an even better union to the cosmos.

Like her foremothers, Vani doesn’t believe in slow burn romances. Courtship ought to be intentional, with both parties consenting to the mutual goal of matrimony. Otherwise, it is a waste of time. And Vani has quite a lot to do in this lifetime. Her demands are reasonable: maintain a handsome investment portfolio and never interfere with her writing hours. She is happy to negotiate the remaining terms, the number of children she would carry or the build of their future estate. She hopes he is amendable to verandas and sprawling tea gardens.

Varun buys her carnations and vermillion saris, goat milk soaps and lavender essence. He grinds turmeric with her mother at the rooster’s call. He lifts her onto morning rickshaws on the way to the bazaar, careful to tuck the ends of her dupatta around her waist. He is always mindful of the skin on her hip, should it lacerate and scald beneath the sun’s lustful gaze. At night, after her parents retire for the evening and their plates of chai are too cool to sip, he rubs coconut oil into her scalp, leaving no strand uncoiled. Later, his investments bear a different kind of fruit.

Vani has not known veneration until Varun. He does not distract her with the what-if’s of his rare shortcomings, does not attribute misunderstandings or dissatisfaction to any moral failing of her own. Should she demand an apology, he is ready to fall to his knees, weepy and pathetic against her womb.

He is perfect and he is hers. It is by design, even if her heart has yet to succumb.

The artist gathers the skirts of her lehenga. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she tells Vani, leaving the bride all by her lonesome on the pedestal.

Vani looks down at her palms. The henna pattern is a living, breathing network that spills from her fingertips and over the mounts of Saturn and Venus. The moon orbits her fate line before expelling a galaxy across her forearms just shy of her elbows. They say the sky is the limit. But this galaxy doesn’t care for earthbound laws. It claws its tendrils into her village, lifting columns and minarets and cupolas between vast constellations. If there is such a thing as seven heavens, those doors are colliding now, blurring the borders where man and angel mustn’t meet. It’s perplexing how this design evokes weightlessness and freedom when her marriage may prove to be anything but.

The guests take to the floor. They tap and sway and bang their sticks to the tempo set by tambourines and tablas. They coalesce into the marigolds draped around her necks, a sea of yellow like the turmeric staining their cheeks. When they venture close to her perch, they dip their fingers into clay pots, collecting even more paste to smear across her forehead, her nose, her chin. She flinches every time, almost ruining the henna. She is fortunate that only the crusted bits on her pinky flake off. The stain left behind is scarlet, bolder than her painted lips but duller than the blood pumping through her chest.

That blood is rich with oxygen and desire. Not for her husband to-be, but for the woman dancing in her pavilion.

Mala will always crave an audience, even if the night belongs to another. She is a crown on top of a pyramid, a ruby that escapes the imperial clutch. She is crude and brash and hypnotic, a serpent brushing through the garden grass, eager to nip her ankles. Many are wary of dancing with her. Her sisters fear Mala will snatch their husbands with those loose hips. Vani fixates on the ring on her belly and the sweat collecting on her collarbone. She is no better than their husbands.

Mala meets Vani’s gaze. They sparkle on a whim. Would you care to dance?

But this is Vani’s kingdom. The ruler of this land does not bend the knee.

Mala understands. Her feet slap the marble floor, her body rolling to the harmonium’s gentle stretch as she performs for the bride. She is close. When she broaches Vani’s ankles, Mala dips into the last of the turmeric, her two fingers caressing the heel before she hoists herself onto the platform.

“You look beautiful,” Mala says, curving her thumb along the arch of Vani’s cheekbone. Vani memorizes the grooves of her fingerprints. She files them away in her mind’s closet, then to the places she wants them buried beneath her sari.

“I can’t wait to wash this off,” Vani says, scowling at her palms. Mala inspects the glistening divots of henna paste.

“Where is your husband’s name? I can’t find it.”

“She must’ve forgotten.”

Mala clicks her tongue. “That’s a shame.” That glint in her eye returns, mischievous as a child caught with chocolate on her jaw. There lies the henna tube, squeezed of nearly all its paste, the aluminum wrinkled beyond hope. Mala scoops it up nonetheless. She folds the tube downwards until dark green paste squirts from the nozzle. Mala’s strokes are thick and sloppy, like she doesn’t want the evidence to go unnoticed. It sends a flush up both their necks.

Vani raises a brow. “This isn’t my husband’s name.”

“No,” Mala agrees. “It’s mine.”

She disappears into the crowd just as the artist returns with a cup of milk. Vani glances at the clock. A minute indeed.

When she takes a sip, she tastes coconut and turmeric.

“Just how I like it,” she says with a smile.