The Color of Our Sky

by Amita Trasi

After all, this was where she was kidnapped.

It is said that time heals everything. I don’t think that’s true. As the years have gone by, I’ve found it odd how simple things can still remind you of those terrible times or how the moment you try so hard to forget becomes your sharpest memory.

The inspector nodded. “Her name was . . . is Mukta. She was a girl . . . an orphan my parents fostered.” I explained, “My Papa was a kind man. He used to work with many NGOs and orphanages in his

did not know my body did not belong to me.

“What tradition? What was decided? That we were going to sleep with men in

the name of God, that we are servants of God but the wife of the entire village?”

free from the evil of widowhood—because we never marry a man. We don’t need one. We have the privilege of marrying the Goddess. You are crazy to be waiting all these years for him. Do you think he will return to the village and accept you after he abandoned you when you were pregnant with Mukta? Surely he has done some magic on you!”

How all the men in the village use us and throw us away, or do you want me to teach her how not to wait for a man to love her, how it only brings disappointment, how not to have children, how not

Women in our community do not know who their fathers are. They don’t deserve a father. What makes you think Mukta deserves one?”

Before I was born, there was a large community of women on the outskirts who were just like us—women who were destined to be slaves.

“You are an intelligent woman to give birth to a girl, and she’s a beautiful, fair one too. Only people in our community realize how important a girl child is, to carry our tradition forward, to receive the blessings of the Goddess. You cannot escape your fate by hiding your daughter.”

We have a tradition to follow.”

When you bend one’s thoughts with words that touch the soul, they call it inspiration.”

This time we should have known better, but hope always outweighs reason.

discovered that there is one thing that we all have in common, irrespective of anyone’s caste or religion: we all get hurt in life, we all want to survive and be happy, and we all deserve to be treated well. After all, we don’t choose where we are born but we can work hard and pave our way to success. And every person on earth deserves to have that chance.”

Despite their opposing value structures, they had always loved each other.

At least, I’d like to remember it that way.

“Your mother is ill because you aren’t willing to dedicate yourself, not willing to take the sacred oath that all women in our family have taken for generations. It is the Goddess’s curse. What else could it be?”

“Mukta will never become one of us,” Amma said faintly, her eyes red with the discomfort of her fever.

Probably she was right about this too—Amma was ill because of me. Maybe the solution was in my hands.

“If you hadn’t agreed you would still have to do it. Nobody was going to wait for you to make up your mind. You are born to do this,”

Mukta will repay this debt for a long time.”

How foolish I was! When I think of those unaware faces now, I see myself in them, not knowing what life I was leading myself into.

The older girls knew what was happening; their faces were soaked with tears and a shriek or a sob would emerge from them now and again.

“You cannot marry any man. You are married to the deity and only after worshipping her will you be able to have a meal. You have to fast two days a week and oblige any man who comes to you. If he beats you, you must not retaliate.”

“Amma is waiting for me,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He laughed as he grabbed my wrist in his hand. “You will get used to this.”

I don’t think I knew what was happening to me; I had found a way out of my body and was watching myself move.

“You work with that organization in Bombay. You help so many kids. Help this one. She is a child. If you leave her here, you know what will happen. She will live like all those women. Take her, I beg you.” I imagined her to be elderly with gray hair. A man’s voice boomed in the corridor outside. “But Aai, I cannot take her. I

“My dear, you will go with this Sahib to the city of Bombay and live with his family. You will do as he says from now on. Do you understand, my dear?” she asked.

Whenever I saw them together, I would have to stop myself from wondering

what that felt like—to have a father who loved you so much.

Before this, I had never witnessed an argument between my parents, and I wondered when Papa’s calmness or Aai’s faithful reticence had disappeared.

them as I repeated them to myself. I read under the candlelight at night and learned as fast as I could. Over the few years

Now there was this world I had been introduced to, and it took me to places I would never be able to travel.

The more poems I read, the easier it became to glide into different lives, to know them better, to learn from them.

blur. I remember now—that’s when she began speaking. Run was her first word to me.

The only way we can rectify our mistakes is to try to undo the wrong we have done.

The very thoughts I agonized over that morning, seemingly so important, would become nothing as the day came to an end.

like a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell for protection, we, too, sometimes have to build a wall around ourselves. Maybe it is the only way we can cope.

We have our own ways of dealing with grief. I hadn’t cried for my mother too. I remember how numb I had been,

It’s your fault isn’t it? It’s your fault Aai is dead.”