Scarlet Writes

My name is Kamala. My father named me after the flowers he'd grown in our terrace, in an aluminum bowl that my mother used for washing clothes. Kamala grows in mud water, usually pond water but my father, who loved plants and gardening, grew Kamala in our terrace. He took pride in every petal that unfolded and he loved to show it off to our guests. He was proud of the Kamala he grew in a bowl but never so of the child, his own. So when I returned home from literacy classes one day when I was 7 years old, he told me that I never needed to go back to study. I cried, refused to eat for days, begged and pleaded to my mother to talk to my father to send me back to class. They didn't budge. I was 12 years old when I was married off to a 16 year old boy who lived in our neighborhood. My husband ran a small shop in Patan. He sold threads and buttons and scissors.  I gave birth to my first child at home, a daughter, when I was 14 years old. I lost three of my children to unknown disease...

The Magical Door It was Monday. I had set an alarm for 6:30a.m. but I only woke up at 7:15a.m. after snoozing the alarm clock thrice. The small, narrow window in my one bedroom apartment hardly let any sunlight in, thanks to the massive gurudwara right in front of the only window in my apartment. On weekends, I’d always draw the curtains close and sleep in until late in the morning. The room would always be dark and the gulli that I lived in was also very quiet and far from the hustle-bustle of the main chowk.  I woke up and checked my phone to see what time it was and hurried off to the toilet to get ready for the day. I lived in an old building and the apartment I shared with my best friend was converted from a terrace into a shabby living space by the miser landlord and rented out to young, miserable college girls like me who had no source of income and survived on petty pocket money sent by our parents. The place was livable in a sense that it protected us from the rain and ani...