Mrs Kumar was unsure of everything as she entered the market. The hustle and bustle of the market felt removed from her as if she had been left behind from it. She realized that each of the thousand times she had entered the market she had always had a to-do list or a list of ingredients to collect for a recipe. And here she was at this late hour of the evening, without a list of ingredients for her life or a recipe for how to cook it.

Mrs Kumar decided that she had wandered into the market because it was familiar. She hoped that the tired alleyways and the small shops of the market remembered enough of the items of her life that she may be able to pick up a decision about it in the next shop around the corner.

The smell of the fresh flowers wafting from the flower vendor reminded her of her husband. She had never really liked Jasmine, but he liked them so much that she had grown to like them too. The memory of a thousand intimate moments made her blush in the fading sunlight. She could always go back to him, her husband. The fight they had was just a fight, everyone fought. She could just go back to him and it would all be back to normal. She looked at her phone, it had been two days and he hadn’t called even once. Mrs Kumar covered her nose and moved on. 

The toy shop down the road reminded her of her son. She would save up money each month for his birthday so she could buy him his favourite toy. And it was always worth it to see his tiny face light up. She could always go to him, he was a dutiful son and would always take her in, but she could never fail to notice how her presence dimmed his eyes just a little nowadays. There was no toy she could buy to fix that.

The bangles on the bangles vendors cart twinkled like her daughter’s laughter. Could she go to her daughter? No, it was too early to even consider that.

And then she saw it, in the window of a fancy shop, a Thanjavur bobblehead doll. Mrs Kumar froze in place, as she watched the doll nod her head and sway her hips. She had had the exact same doll when she was a little girl. It had been her most prized possession. When her father would play songs on the radio, Mrs Kumar would run to the table where the doll stood and nudge her gently, and she would join the doll in her dance always in tune with the songs.  Read more

Mrs.Mani stared at the last two rows of white dots on the ground. She set the bowl of white rangoli down and stood up holding both her knees. She winced as her back cracked like an old twig. It looked like the vermilion on her forehead was seeping into the violent shades of the morning sky. The sun was not yet seen on the horizon, and judging by the cold sunlight that had just reached the wide metal gates of the house, it was well before six in the morning.

Mrs.Mani wiped her forehead as she looked down at the rangoli she had been drawing for a while now. It looked like a chariot, well an artist’s rendering of a chariot. And the last two rows that formed the wheels of this chariot were the only ones left to be connected. It looked simple now, the chariot design with all its dots joined the right way, but Mrs Mani knew how joining even two dots the wrong way would spoil the whole design. She stared at the road that led to the gate, they must have landed at the airport by now. Her son and his new wife, a woman she had never met. They would be home in another hour. Mrs.Mani sighed and knelt down again. She picked up a pinch of the rangoli and could feel it instantly slip out of her grip. She hesitated, which dot should be connected to which one next. More of the rangoli slipped out of her fingers. She rushed her fingers and joined the last two rows. Read more