The Henna Artist
Her feet step lightly on the hard earth, calloused soles insensible to the tiny pebbles and caked mud along the riverbank. On her head she balances a mutki, the same earthenware jug she uses the carry water from the well every day. Today, instead of water, the girl is carrying everything she owns: a second petticoat and blouse, her mother’s wedding sari, The Tales of Krishna her father used to read to her—the pages fabric-soft from years of handling—and the letter that arrived from Jaipur earlier this morning...
The Perfumist of Paris
There it is again. The idea that we women lose track of ourselves. Lakshmi always said henna was a way for a woman to find a part of herself she may have mislaid. Sheela said she wanted to bring the forgotten women back to life because while their painted images were famous, they themselves were invisible; they’d been discarded, like candy wrappers tossed on the ground. Is that erasure of us something other people do to us or do we women do it to ourselves?
Six Days in Bombay
I looked at our joined hands: hers blue-veined and pale, nails bitten to the quick, remnants of paint embedded in the fingerprint swirls, and mine the color of sand, scrubbed clean, slightly chapped at the fingertips. The warmth of her skin, slightly moist from the fever, was strangely comforting, the way my mother’s touch was. Mira Novak seemed to crave intimacy as intensely as most patients avoided it; they wanted only to reclaim their body—the one we poked and prodded—as soon as possible, shrugging off the memory of their convalescence… 
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur
I stop walking to look at the mountains rising from their sleep. Winter in Shimla is coming to an end. The men and women wrap themselves in two, sometimes three, pashmina shawls, but the hills are casting off their blankets. I hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of melting snow hitting the hard ground as I make my way carefully to Lakshmi Kumar’s house. In the distant hills to the north, I Imagine my tribe herding their goats and sheep through the Kangra Valley to the village of Bramour, in the upper Himalayas, as I would be doing were my husband Dev still alive...
Daughters of the Pink City
(March 2, 2027)
She stands in the center of the room, spine as straight as a khejri tree. She bends her left arm at the elbow, extends it across her torso. Does the same with her other arm. She looks like Krishna, the one in my coloring book, resting his arms across a fence to watch the cowherds. Suddenly, without warning, she spins. Again. And again. And again. As if she might never stop. She laughs as she twirls. I clap, jump up and down. I want to dance too. She smiles, extends her hands, grasps mine. Tightly. I’m safe. We spin together. We are a breeze. A gust. Wind. Soon, we are only air. When we stop, she puts a finger to her lips. This is our secret.