I stay rigid, not daring to move for what seems like forever, and just when I think he’s forgotten, he lifts the flap.
“It’s all clear,” Jeevan whispers.
My arms and legs are like lead and won’t move until I force them out from under me, willing them into action. I feel for my bag and manage to slide out of the cart, landing in a twisted heap on the hard ground, my body on fire, the pins and needles nearly making me cry out. I pull up my hood and hobble into the busy market, desperate to get away without being spotted.
It takes all my willpower not to turn back and look for Jeevan, but I keep my eyes straight ahead and slip away among the stalls, disappearing deeper into the labyrinth, my pendant bouncing in time with my heart.
I try my best to dodge the early-morning shoppers as they barge their way down the narrow aisles. A cyclist frantically rings his bell and yells over my head as he zooms past me, knocking me right into a woman dressed in a beautiful sari. She’s carrying a garland of pale jasmine flowers as if she’s going to the temple and has a delicate red bindi in the middle of her forehead.
“Careful, betay,” she says kindly. She smells of freshly baked naan and my stomach gives an ache as she reminds me of Ma.
I take out my map and hold it in front of me, peering at the heart I drew around Moormanali this morning and the distance to Zandapur stretching between the two places. “Chai,” cries a loud voice to my left. “Hot, hot chai.” The boy is about my height and has a metal carrier in his hand full of clinking glasses and steaming pepper-spiced tea. He crashes into me, sending the map flying into a deep puddle. My hood slips off my head as I dive into the water after my map, the coils of my long braid unraveling. “Look where you’re going, you spooky-eyed idiot. You nearly made me spill the chai and lost me my morning money.” The boy mumbles more curses, heading off into the tightly packed stalls that spiral on forever.
“Sorry … I didn’t mean to,” I call after him. “It was just an accident.” I lift the soggy map out of the puddle. The ink has run and the paper disintegrates in my hands. What use is it now? I leave it on a pile of empty boxes.
I duck into a wooden hut with a swinging sign that reads TOILET and take a deep breath of rotten air, trying to work out where to go and what to do next. What if Jeevan’s papa has found out and comes chasing after me? And once Ma realizes I’ve gone, she’ll call the police. I have to find some way of disguising myself.
I tug down my hood, run my hand along my braid, and know I have to give it up. I won’t cry—it’s only hair; it’s not worth crying over—but when I think of all those years that Ma spent combing and oiling it, willing it to grow longer, thicker, more silky, I have to grab Jeevan’s penknife quick before I lose my courage. I flick it open and hack into my braid. The hair is thick and hard to cut, the blade sawing backward and forward, painfully pulling at the strands.
The feather I wove back in this morning falls out and floats to the floor.
“This sacrifice is for you, Papa.”
I pick the feather up, thread it through my chopped-off braid, and put it in my bag, ready to release it like Shiva did into the newborn waters when I arrive at the source of the Ganges.
I kiss my pendant, take the penknife one final time, and continue to hack my hair even shorter.
I look in every direction before racing away from the stalls, heading out of the market toward a sign for the train station.
The sun bakes the back of my head and I think of Ma, who will be busy with the twins or cooking by now. She’ll probably be making my favorite spiced eggy bread that I cover in oozing honey from our own hives. She won’t go to light the deeva until later, so she won’t have seen my second note yet. She’ll think I’m on the mountainside, or tending the cows, not here in the middle of Sonahaar, running away from home.
I begin to cross the chaotic road toward a neem tree in the middle of an island with traffic blaring all around it. The air is thick and smoky.
Taxis beep at meandering cows and a rickshaw driver nearly runs straight over me. When I reach the island at last, I leap toward the tree, clinging to it and wiping the sweat off my face.
On the opposite sidewalk is an old stone building with a sign above the wide double doors: SONAHAAR RAILWAY STATION.
I launch myself back into the road until I’m right by the doorway, where two dogs skulk, their heads low to the ground, chewing on scraps of paratha that some kind passenger has thrown to them.
I hope I don’t come back as a dog after I die, having to beg for my food. Our holy teachings say you never know what animal you might become in your next life. I think of Nanijee and the lamagaia in the garden and wonder if it really was her.
I push the enormous doors open and step into a huge, echoing hall with a high glass ceiling. The station is full of people carrying heavy suitcases and immense bundles of luggage on their heads.
Hundreds of noisy sparrows fly from side to side, bickering and pecking at the ground.
I see straightaway that the hall is filled with police and keep my eyes lowered, turn briefly to check
