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...

It was 7p.m. when she reached home. She unlocked the door to her apartment and hung the key on the keyholder above the shoe rack. She carefully put her shoes in the bottom shelf of the rack and took out her indoor slippers from the top. She put her handbag on top of the coffee table and went to the kitchen. She washed her hands before she put a cup of water to boil on the stove. She added a spoon of tea leaves. She opened the door to the verandah and went out to pick some mint leaves from the flower pot. She rinsed the leaves and put it into the water boiling on the stove. She poured the tea into a mug and carried it to the living room. She lay a tea coaster on the table and put the mug on top of it. She unbuttoned her pants and unclipped her bra and sighed as she sat down on the couch. She looked around and closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy the taste of mint in her mouth and silence surrounding her. This was a rare moment for her.  Usually, she picked up her son from his schoo...

One winter morning, JoJo woke up alone in bed. He looked around but didn’t see his parents anywhere. He started to look for his mother. Just then, he saw his grandmother preparing breakfast in the kitchen. He asked for his mother but his grandmother replied, ‘Your parents have gone out for the day. It’s just us today and we are going to have a good day ahead!’ JoJo was excited to spend the day with his grandmother. They started by eating apples, scrambled eggs and pancakes for breakfast. JoJo asked, ‘What next?’ Then they went out to the garden to feed the pigeons and they chased butterflies and followed ants, picked up the flowers that had fallen on the ground to make garlands and did some cycling. Then he asked again, ‘What next?’ Then they ate lunch together and took a quick nap under the warm winter sun. As he woke up from his nap, he was surprised to find his grandmother ready with some of his favorite books and crayons and sketch books. They spent the next few minutes...

“You don’t love me, do you?” she asked. This was her favorite question. Although the answer never was what she expected, she loved to anticipate. “I don’t”, he replied. She went on doing the chores; folding clothes and stacking them in the cupboard, filling water in the bottle for the night, putting moisturizer on her hand and feet that had dried and roughened after a long Saturday at home cleaning the window nets, scrubbing the floor, washing the dishes and wiping the glass windows and mirrors sparkling clean. Before she turned the lights off, she decided to finish a chapter from the book she was reading ‘The Seduction of Silence’ written by Bem Le Hunte.   As she was pretending to read, her husband was lying with his face turned away from her. The silence weighed in and she could tell that he was playing a game on his phone, his favorite hobby. She curled up her legs up to her chest. Not once did he bother to peer out from the blanket to see what she was doi...