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This is an entry in the Review Game’s November Writing challenge contest, in response to the prompt: “Writing comes more easily if you have something to say." A girl whose life has been split between India and Germany contemplates whether her road has ended.

*

“Hey!” The young man’s shirt shined white despite the open sewer running down the centre of the street. The cotton was an unblemished reflection of the glare of the sun; she turned away. “Hey, wait!”

She walked on. As he followed her, his feet dodged rotting waste instinctively, like one born to the slums. Yet Vani had not seen him here before. Surely she would have remembered such an attractive face. His was not the oily charm of the shop-wala’s, nor the cold, manicured good looks of the high castes. He reminded her of the high white clouds that promised monsoon, months before it ever came, and drifted on without once soiling their feet near the earth.

“Hey, you’re name is Vani, isn’t it?” the men went on, talking despite her silence. He swerved around dogs and children, suffering past radios blaring shrill distorted keening to the rhythm of the tabla drums, ducked beneath the washing strung between the electricity poles and the houses, all just so that he could walk by her side. But he kept a respectful distance; of this she was most pleased. “I was reading this in Tariq-ji’s order book.” His shadow danced beside hers, shimmering over a shop display. “I am seeing you around the bazaar since many days now. Perhaps a month even, isn’t it? Really you are walking most graciously. I have noticed this. Also I am being very intrigued with yourself.”

She said nothing. The road widened, leading past a line of tamarind trees that held off the slap of the sun and embraced them into their dusty dusk, swallowing their shadows together into the greater shade. She could not help but relax a little, outside of the burning of the sun.

“I’m not ragging you, I swear,” the man went on, eager and serious at once. “I am thinking perhaps you are living with the Sister-jis’, perhaps you are even thinking of becoming one? A nun-wala, isn’t it?” His voice caught, hesitating. Hoping. “Only I am seeing you at the temple too, some days, so… But perhaps I am assuming too much, and it is with the Sister-jis’ that your heart lies? Most gracious apologies if that is so… Is it, so?”

She pulled her veil closer around her face, trapping her hot breath. The air tasted thick with dust and scent. She tried to concentrate on that feeling on her tongue, and exclude the man from her senses. He fell behind a little, losing hope. A cloud darkening in the shade of the tamarinds. Perhaps it would bring rain after all.

“You are paining me, truly,” his voice came from behind her, and she could hear the truth of his words. “I am wanting to talk to you only. You must please be telling me just who your father is and I might talk with him…? Or not. But kindly just let me know.”

Tears pricked at her eyes, red hot pins of frustration. But she walked on.

“What is it: famous lady, are you?” he called, slightly ragged with the beginnings of despair and desperation, “Movie star, perhaps? Politician? No comment?”

Still she said nothing.

There was nothing she could say. Not since she’d been three, since the accident between her, her father, and the bottle of acid. Actually, the only accidental thing about it was that she had survived. Her father certainly hadn’t meant for that to happen. Pouring acid down a toddler’s throat ought to have killed her. She remembered the searing burn as the liquid melted her flesh, the agony blasting any thought from her mind. It had seemed to burn a hole straight to her heart, and that it was time only that kept her from death. But a wandering do-gooder had noticed her slowly dying in her sweaty hospital bed, and had hand-picked her and spirited her away. Plucked straight from the hands of Shiva in Rajapore and into the crisp white sheets of the Sisters of the Holy Faith Hospital in Munich.

The Sisters only had one God, and as specialist plastic surgeons reconstructed her neck and chest, she often wondered how it was that one God could be more powerful than Shiva in his many names and many forms. Shiva, the Pure One. Shiva, the Supreme One. Shiva, the kind, the gracious One.

“Don’t be so damn blasphemous,” her mother would whisper to her late at night in their bed. Her mother did not need to hear her speak her thoughts. Her eyes could dissect them from her with a glance. It was a mother’s magic, of this she was sure. “Of course Shiva is the most powerful. “Did not Shiva in the form of Mrutyunjaya conquer death for Markandeya?”

Vani would breathe in her mother’s faint smell of cloves and cumin and soap in the darkness, and think for Markandeya, perhaps, but not for me. In the darkness, her thoughts were safe from her mother’s prying eyes.

After years of surgery and rehabilitation, the specialists decided they had done all they could. They had saved her life certainly, if not her voice. Satisfied, and expecting her to be forever grateful and likewise satisfied, they had sent her back to the Rajapore slums. Releasing her back to the wild, where she belonged.

Only, of course, she didn’t belong. She had grown up in Germany, albeit in a hospital. When she had felt the sun melting her skin, smelt the air thick and pungent with mangoes and spice and excrement, she’d remembered home from a long distant memory. But the place did not remember her. Her mother did belong, despite their years away, and her father had taken her back, on the condition that Vani did not soil their house with the dishonour of her presence any more.

As if being born a girl hadn’t been bad enough, her scars put her beyond redemption. Really, the scars were not so bad, considering. Still they were the last nail in her coffin, society-wise. She was truly worthless now. But Vani had not survived all those years of surgery to give up now. Her mind fought against the box she was being forced into. In her opinion, the burn of the acid had certainly wiped her soul clean of the impurities of being born a girl. Constantly veiled, her scars need not offend anyone. Surely someone would find a use for her?

Her mother had pointed the way.

“Don't worry about small-small things,” her mother had whispered as she hugged her goodbye on their doorstep, then pushed her away, “It is necessary to think of living only. Go to the Sister-ji’s. You know all about their god now. They will be taking pity on you for sure. Pity is their business, nah?”

So she had sought out the Sister-ji’s, and though they were different to the ones in Munich, their God was the same. The convent had a strange mix that spoke of home in a way that nowhere else could. In Germany, the walls were always as crispy white as the sheets, and the streets outside straight and clean as clean too. As empty of people as they were of rubbish. In Rajapore, sights and scents and sounds and people collided constantly. Inside the convent, the calm strict lines and quiet of Europe was bathed in air heavy with curry and incense, the fresh smell of rain in summer and the taste of hot dust in winter. The place was as mixed up as her, and she liked it.

She ignored the lessons the Sister-ji’s taught the younger girls. Reading-Writing: that was fanciness of no use to her. She was Cooking and Cleaning only. One of the nuns, Sister Agnetha, knew how to sign, and these were the only lessons Vani would take. Together they had bridged the differences between their country’s sign languages, and in doing so she found a friend, and a voice when she needed it. Though truly, it was rare that she was needing it. Her life was simple and pre-ordained. The other girls being taught by the nuns might simper about this boy and that, universities and marriage and children and great great grandchildren, but Vani knew those paths were barred to her. No dowry, no family, worthless as she was, no boy in his right mind would be looking twice at her.

Until today.

Today, a boy had not only looked twice at her, but he had been interested in her. And she had no way to tell him she thought his eyes very fine, or his hair wondrously thick and glossy. The words were bursting from her but imprisoned within, the chasm of her ruined voice box unspannable.

She ran through the deep gloom of the convent’s corridors, pulling off her veil with impatient fingers. The quick rhythm of her bare feet echoed through the empty space, introducing her presence like a solitary drum roll. Not a tidy, purring European drum roll, but the heady ecstasy of a tabla configuration. It matched exactly the erratic pounding of her heart. Like pushing a dancer through faster and faster movements, the rhythm pushed her on towards the Sister-ji’s cells. Now more than any other time, she needed a voice.

“Vani,” Sister Agnetha said, seeing the agitation rushing her through the hushed murk of the halls, “what is it?”

Vani didn’t explain about the young man. No time for that. She could only trust her eyes would tell that story for her. Bringing the full force of her gaze on her friend, she prayed to any god that was listening.

Teach me how to write, she signed.

*

AN: Hey so thanks for reading and feel free to read the other entries (they’re not very long, generally much shorter than mine!) and vote for your fave : )

they are on fictionpress

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or go to forums / genreal / the review game

or click on the link in my profile

:D Thanks!

And as always, most humble thanks to my glorious Beta Narq 8)