Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

into her eyes. I sigh, because I know she’s going to say she wants to marry Ashok. It strikes me that perhaps he’s the reason she gave in so easily—to pacify Aunt N while she gathered her forces for what’s bound to be the biggest battle of them all.
    Then my cousin surprises me all over again.
    “I want to design clothes,” she says. “Salwaar kameezes. Pleated wedding ghagras with mirrors stitched in. Kurtas for men, embroidered white on white silk. Baby frocks in satin and eyelet lace. I want to have my own company, with my own tailors and my own label, so that customers at all the best stores will ask for the Basudha brand. People in Bombay and Delhi and Madras will clamor for my work.”
    I look at her face, gone all intense and shiny, and don’t know what to say. I’d no idea she felt like this. She’s never spoken of it—and with good reason. I can just hear Aunt N shrilling, “ATailor! You want to be a Common Tailor and rub kali on your ancestors’ faces!”
    Just the thought of it makes me mad. Why shouldn’t Sudha do what makes her happy? Why shouldn’t she at least dream about it? So I complete her dream for her. “And one day you’ll be selling to the movies. Stars like Rakhee and Amitabh will refuse to dress in anything but your designs!”
    Sudha’s eyes gleam like the mirrors she wants to stitch into her clothes. “Don’t forget the diplomats. They’ll be wearing my kurtas and Nehru coats and embroidered saris to England and Africa and Japan.”
    “And America, don’t forget America!”
    “And America, of course!” Both of us are laughing wildly now, our current problems forgotten as we swing suspended in that delicious space between belief and disbelief.
    If there is a mocking, answering laugh from the honeysuckle-weighted cornices, the Bidhata Purush’s attendants eavesdropping, or maybe the demons, we don’t hear it.

AND SO the year passes. Sometimes the days are glassy and unmoving, as though I am suspended in a coma, waiting for my real life to resume. Sometimes they jerk ahead, halting and sputtering, reminding me that my brief freedom is about to end. Soon my world will be enclosed by these walls, these pipal trees. While Anju—how far she’ll go, leaving me behind. How dull I’ll seem to her when she returns from each day outside, bright as a sunflower that’s been drinking light. When the time comes for me to break out of my prison, will I have the strength? Or will I be like a too-tame house bird who prefers her cage to the vast frightening blue of the sky?
    When I think this, I’m filled with heaviness. Did I give in too hastily? The lavish kindness my mother has started showering on me since I bowed to her decree is no comfort. They stifle me, all those evenings she spends teaching me to tie my hair in the newest styles, shaping my eyebrows into perfect arches, taking me to afternoon tea at the homes of her friends so I’ll know how to conduct myself in company. She has me listen in on their conversations, because she says that will teach me the ways of the world. But I am sickened by their always-same stories about the infidelities of husbands and the tricks wives must employ to hold on to them. Thank God Ashok is not like that, I think as I affix an engrossed expression on my face.
    Although I haven’t spoken to Ashok since our meeting at the movie house, I have seen him. The first time was on our way backfrom school. Singhji was driving while Ramur Ma sat next to him, ramrod straight with renewed importance. In the backseat we talked desultorily—we knew whatever we said would make its way to my mother. It was one of those heat-warped days when everything wavers in the airlessness—pavements, buses, even the face of the traffic policeman who raised his hand, bringing our car to a halt just before we turned into our street. So that when Ashok appeared not far from our car window, dressed in the same white shirt I’d last seen him in, I thought he was only a