I stared at her in shock. She couldn’t have been more different from the way I had pictured her. The first and biggest difference between the imagined Radha Aunty and the real one was the colour of her skin. She was a karapi, as dark as a labourer. Worse, her long hair was frizzy like Ammachi’s and it seemed about to burst out of the clip that held it in place at the back of her neck. She was thin, not plump, and, as Amma would have said, “flat like a boy.” Instead of a sari, she wore a halter-top and strange trousers that were tight to the knee and then became wider. Further, the heels on her
...more
All these performative feminine things that are an expectation... not everyone in their culture submits. Was it going to London that changed things?
