Healing Priya's daughter of chickenpox sent Anjali back to her bed for a week, and the stupid woman wouldn't even agree to vaccinate her daughter and her other children to keep this from happening again. She did seem properly grateful, though--at least she showed up at the door twice a day with daal and chapatis for Anjali's family, and she sent ( Read more... )

He could have made her all joy and happiness, a dancer to welcome the spring, a love-doll who loved loving. He didn't. He made her self-aware, and broken, and dark inside but with the longing for light. And he made her know it. She knew where her flaws lay, and her darkness, but unlike a human, she was not allowed to embrace it. And she was not ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

The dog honors were on Saturday, and she wouldn't miss them. She didn't care that it meant she'd have to skip what sounded like an honest-to-god date with an honest-to-god decent guy who wasn't half bad-looking. That was just a date. This was her partner finally getting the recognition she deserved. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have to be there for my ( Read more... )

If Gibreel died, could India be far behind? They hovered beside his bed, waited in the streets outside his house, and it seemed that the whole country held its breath. Hawkers spoke in hushed tones near his house, beggars forgot their lines, and even the incessant monkeys stilled their chatter when they ran along the rooftops nearby. The whole ( Read more... )

Even the consolation of suttee was taken from her. The wood would not light to a match, no matter how her mother-in-law threw kerosene upon the funeral pyre. She looked up and saw her young and handsome husband lying so still upon his pyre, and she knew that she could not be joining him after all this day, despite that a truly devoted wife would ( Read more... )