Shush

A recently published story that actually paid my rent

Original Artwork by Mariam Chagelishvili

Today, I’ll share a short story of mine that was published recently at ISLAND Magazine, a phenomenal lit mag that I’ve dreamt about being featured in for, oh…quite a long time (possibly since I knew they existed)! Over the years of submitting to them, I’ve received a few “special rejections” from them in that they said they enjoyed my writing and wanted me to submit again (but that particular piece wasn’t quite it).

When I submitted “Shush” to ISLAND last year, however, I had a very very strong feeling that they’d take it…you could say it was like the very loud beating of wings in my stomach, the surety I felt. And they did! And I got paid very well for it, and it did cover a whole month’s rent. That’s the first time it’s happened to me outside contests.

I’m excited for you to read “Shush”, it’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, and it took me three years. Make of that what you will.

I’ve also recorded an audio version of the story. I find the automatic AI audio that Substack adds to post always sounds ridiculous, so I prefer to do my own when I can (because I myself love audiobooks).

---

Kashi stares at the broken fan. Her mother left her here three days ago. Didn’t say a word. Just collected a fat envelope and rode an auto rickshaw for who knows how many miles out of the city, maybe all the way to a train station to get over to the south side where the houses don’t smell like piss all the time.

The older woman who took her in and sent her mother off told her that Dr Roy would be around at the end of the week to check her. Until then, she was supposed to get comfortable. Make friends. Eat. She was shown into the mess. White walls but otherwise dark. Nine women sat around a single long wooden table. Kashi just stood there by the door as they all looked up at her. What could she say anyway to these pregnant strangers sitting around waiting for food like that? And it was so weird being the only one without a baby inside. Not that Kashi really wanted a baby. But she’d been sold off to a gestational hostel of all places by her own mother of all people and now she’d have to carry some firangi’s fetus for the next nine months. And would she be free after that? Something told her these nine pregnant women here weren’t having their first.

A thin, dark man with an old striped apron and a hairnet brought the dinner, pushing a steel cart with ten plates and ten small plastic cups each containing three pills. He stopped beside Kashi and this made her feel strange enough to head toward the table. But before she could go any further, one of the women shrieked.

“Dr Roy got a big client today or what!” she said, her eyes fixed on a crispy brown ball slimed in syrup on a stainless steel plate. Then, she looked straight at Kashi. The girl picked up the gulab jamun rather elegantly with thumb and forefinger walked to her, thick rose gloop dripping on the white and black tiles, and popped it into Kashi’s mouth. The whole thing took only a few seconds but it appeared to happen in slow motion: the woman lifting the spongy sweet, giving it a small squeeze so it produced an almost inaudible gleeful squeal as buds of sap oozed from its heart; her pitter-pattering over to Kashi and Kashi opening her mouth as though she’d been instructed by an outside force; the gulab jamun filling her mouth and in an instant exploding like a small bomb, the sweet goo, crispened black skin and rubbery insides melting into her teeth and on her tongue and down her throat. Then, the gulab jamun was in her belly and she felt so sick but also thrilled.

“You’re new, that’s why,” the woman said in response to Kashi’s dazed expression, her words akin to a squawk, perhaps because of her inexplicable joy. “I’m Pinky. Come eat with me.”

In the two days since that first meal, Kashi hasn’t eaten anything. She’s always prided herself in being able to go for days without a single grain or seed. Water’s always been enough: reliable, simple yet mystical, taking on the colour of whatever vessel it fills. Now, she hears a scratch at the door, as though someone were using a set of talons. She gets up and opens it. It’s Pinky, the woman who shoved the giant dessert down her throat. She’s a dark-skinned, thinner girl with an almost imperceptible bump. Her soot-coloured hair frizzes around her. She stands itching her left leg with her right toes, painted a bright bile yellow.

“You a special one?” she says. Her voice is tempered today, but still has a distinct trill to it, as though she’d rather be singing the words.

Kashi’s a little distracted by the way Pinky is slightly rocking on her heels now, back and forth, one hand on the door jamb. “Hm?” is all Kashi has time to say before she chirps up again.

“I mean, you are the prettiest! Maybe that’s why. Some big sahib’s picked you, and now Dr Roy’s here early just to check you out and see if all’s in order.”

“What’s all’s in order?” Kashi manages to ask.

“You know, all the stuff that’s got to be in order.” As Pinky says this, she looks Kashi up and down and then laughs.

“Are you always so happy?” Kashi says, a little sharply.

“Now that you’re here,” Pinky says, unfazed. When Kashi neither replies nor reacts, Pinky tells her she must come out right now.

Kashi grimaces, and now she’s the one conducting the head-to-toe glare. She notices how Pinky’s long maxi, predictably pink, has small birds sewn on the hems. She thinks they are crows at first. But whatever they are, they don’t look like they belong there. No, these birds didn’t come with the dress when it was purchased from some street corner stall or scavenged in a redi-market. And then the dress swooshes and swirls and Kashi feels a little dizzy.

“Coming?” Pinky, who had turned around and already started walking off, says, glancing back at Kashi.

Kashi touches her forehead. “For what?” she murmurs.

Pinky smiles and takes Kashi’s hand. “Oh, you’ll see, little myna.”

“Kashi,” Kashi corrects her.

“Oh but myna is the most beautiful little bird! You’ve seen them, right? Outside the windows? I think they sing sweeter than koels and nightingales but because they look like common sparrows, no one gives them a second thought!”

Kashi stares at her blankly.

“Okay, maybe not myna, how about mina? Little mina, little fish, you move like a fish, all mysterious and hidden away—”

“Aren’t we going somewhere?” Kashi interjects.

Pinky holds her hand and pulls her along.

Dr Roy checks on the women every week. They stand outside his door, which always stays open, and one by one disappear behind the white curtains. All that can be heard are muffled voices and metallic clangs. Sometimes, the click of a camera. And then the women walk out carrying a thing resembling a lollipop in their hands as though they were little children who’d just visited a dentist. When it’s Kashi’s turn for the first time, she shuffles into the room and wants to close her eyes, it’s so bright. No fan in here, though. A window AC hums away in the corner, filling the space with a sense of winter. The doctor is seated on a black, leather chair.

Dr Roy’s younger than most doctors she’s seen, though she hasn’t seen many. He asks her to remove her salwar. “Lie down,” Dr Roy says, voice unwavering, eyes glancing through some papers he’s holding nimbly in his long fair hands. Kashi isn’t too dark herself but she is still a girl you might refer to as “dusky” if you had to provide a missing person’s report. You wouldn’t use kaali, though – never. Kashi is secretly proud of this. She doesn’t really want to be a gori anyway, because too often those girls look like they could be albinos or diseased with leprosy or something else. Dusky is in the middle, it’s a balance of the skin, the perfect amount of light and night.

“Legs on the stirrups,” Dr Roy instructs in an even tone. He bends down to look.

Kashi feels uneasy. She doesn’t know what he’s expecting to find. She wonders if her mother told him that she’s a virgin and now Dr Roy will find out she most definitely is not.

Dr Roy does not touch her. He looks and then scribbles something on his white papers full of numbers and the occasional set of long words Kashi cannot make out.

“Dress yourself,” he instructs.

“I’m okay?” she asks.

He looks at her now and Kashi realizes this might be the first time he is really seeing her, eye to eye. She notices his green eyes. What an odd colour for a desi! She has heard how men from Kashmir sometimes have green eyes because of the black magic their mothers perform to ward off soldiers. She feels very warm between her legs, as though someone were sitting beneath her holding a soft, bright flame.

Dr Roy looks confused by her inquiry. “Your name is Kashi, no surname?” he asks.

The way he says her name is so … educated, she thinks. No one was a BA-pass in her colony, let alone MA or MBBS. The only reason they even learned there was something like an MBBS was by watching Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. Kashi watched it in the hall twice with Arun. She feels a crack in her throat even though she hasn’t done anything but lie down and then get up and think about the green-eyed doctor a little. She looks away from Dr Roy at the skeleton behind him, at the diagram of a woman’s body on the wall, at the wall itself, naked and white, the blackened light switch, and then the cable that runs down to the floor, a grey dustless granite. She nods.

“Your mother tell you anything about the hostel?”

“She said she was taking me somewhere I could be useful.”

Dr Roy laughs almost imperceptibly, but in that quiet, white room Kashi feels the laughter fill the whole space around her. She looks up. And, just as suspected, he has perfect teeth. Arun’s teeth were yellow and crooked and often stained black from the tambaku.

“I am sorry she was unkind to you, Kashi.” Dr Roy has said her name twice now. This feels unusual. No one of such importance has ever said Kashi’s name more than once.

She bursts into tears, sputtering fat drops falling out of her eyes and pooling under her nose and lips, down her neck and disappearing into her kameez. She remembers hearing of saints who can cry so much their eyes become like water guns spraying everywhere, firing waterfalls and drenching everyone in their vicinity, puddles forming at their feet as they weep and weep for God. Her name too is after the holy city of Kashi, where many firangis flock to wear white robes for a month and practice a strict routine of yoga and meditation every day. But none of them can match those waterfall-eyed saints. Kashi’s always been spellbound by such displays of devotion. Not by the devotion, but the displays. How a body can do such things as create tear rivers for all that ache and love inside. How mothers bewitch their babies into having emerald eyes.

Dr Roy does not attempt to console her but he also does not ask her to leave. He sits down on his chair and looks at her, from time to time writing things down. Eventually, Kashi composes herself. She is so embarrassed she wishes she were dead. But she also wants to never die, so she can always sit there, crying, before Dr Roy. Arun would have walked out or slammed her against a wall by now.

“Heightened emotional states are to be expected,” Dr Roy says. “The medications will do that to you. But this is good, it simply means they’re working. Your body’s becoming a perfect vessel.”

Kashi has never heard anyone describe any part of her as perfect. She does not know what the other word means, but it hardly matters. She nods.

“Have you made friends yet?”

Kashi shrugs.

“Try some lighthearted gossip with the others,” Dr Roy says. “Watch a few films. Eat fruit. Make friends. Women often get lonely when they’re carrying.”

Kashi nods as if she understands what this means.

“All right, off you go. I ought to stick to the schedule next time! You’ve made it a bit hard, but that’s all right.” Against her own desire, Kashi ambles out of the room and all she wants to do is run to the bathroom to check just how pathetic she looks but there’s Pinky again. She grabs Kashi by the elbow and screeches “Come with me!”, whisking her down the hall.

Pinky’s brought her to the bathroom and locked the door behind them.

“It’s your eyes,” she says, her hands twitching, face sweaty.

Kashi takes a quick glance at the big mirrors, trying to see if her eyes look swollen. Dr Roy will be stooped before one of the other women’s legs now, peering inside, writing down notes over another set of numbers.

“Or maybe the way you drink water,” Pinky continues, ‘like you don’t take it for granted. Makes me feel like I can trust you’.

“With what?”

“I’m finishing my first trimester.”

Is Kashi supposed to congratulate her? “Why are we locked in here?”

And then Kashi notices little drops of blood on the floor where Pinky is standing. She sees Pinky’s hand between her legs and then looks up at her.

Oh, Kashi breathes out. “You need Dr Roy!”

“No, no, no, listen,” Pinky’s talking faster now. A few more drops fall on the ground and, is that … what is that … Kashi squints and bends a little away so her shadow isn’t obstructing the view of what it is she thinks she’s seeing.

Feathers. Small, silver feathers. Lying there innocently inside the drops of blood, tinged a little pink, but otherwise fluffy and sublime. Kashi wants to reach out and pick them up.

“It’s my third round,” Pinky says. “And that’s all you get here. If you miscarry them all, then zzzip, bye bye, tata!” Pinky raises her hands up in the air as though she’s a thief who’s been caught in the act. Her left hand is covered with blood and some shimmering feathers. Again, Kashi wants to reach out and pluck them off. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. This girl can’t be much older than her.

“You really should go to Dr Roy, you know,” Kashi says. “I can’t do anything. I haven’t even been pregnant before. Not once!”

Pinky seems a little distracted. She’s peeling the feathers off her hands. Kashi wants to ask her why there are feathers in her blood. Who knows, maybe firangi’s babies have feathers.

“Yes,” Pinky sighs. “You’re right, of course. I just thought some girl-to-girl time first would be nice. But Dr Roy likes me, he’ll help me. For all I know, this isn’t even the baby leaving just yet.”

And now, Pinky’s looking away, into the mirror, but not at her own reflection. “Last time, it was bones,” she whispers. “In the toilet, small chicken bones. Before that, eggshells, brown but with spots of white, like little diamonds. Dr Roy had to pick them out of my hair, you know, down there.”

Kashi’s body stiffens a little. She’s not sure what Pinky’s going on about, but if this is Pinky’s third pregnancy, then it means she’s been here for at least a year even if the other two didn’t take. A whole year of check-ups with Dr Roy. No wonder he likes her.

“You should go now,” Kashi says as she unlocks the door and walks out.

Next time Kashi sees Dr Roy, she doesn’t cry. She’s managed to get a hold of some nail polish from Pinky and now has cherry red toes. After removing her salwar, she itches the back of her left leg with her right toe.

“When are you going to do it, then?” she asks.

Dr Roy raises an eyebrow and it makes Kashi feel all soft inside as though she were a gulab jamun covered in all that sweet gloop.

“Sorry,” she says, lying down on the examination table. “I mean, the baby. When are you going to put the baby in me?”

Dr Roy slips on some latex gloves and Kashi feels a twinge in her belly. “Is it a rich desi couple or they’re angrezi only?”

Dr Roy doesn’t sit down on his chair but instead walks over to her. He looks down at her and smiles a little. His eyes are green like a forest, Kashi thinks and then feels that it sounds stupid because it isn’t really anything she can say out loud to him. Green like grass in the monsoon. Too much. Green like limes, like baby leaves.

“When I was little,” Kashi says, staring right back at Dr Roy, “I always thought I’d have the baby of the man I fell in love with. I guess that can’t happen anymore.” She tries to look especially sad when she says this last part, drooping her eyelids a little and tucking her chin into her neck.

“Kashi,” Dr Roy says at last. “I want to tell you a story.”

Kashi props herself up on her elbows. She can smell his breath. Of course, it’s minty with the slightest hint of smoke, not cigarettes but something finer and more mysterious, like hookah.

“Many years ago, a girl came into the hostel who was quite like you.”

Dr Roy’s voice is even and rhythmic, as though he were speaking alongside a metronome.

“Like me?”

“Yes, because she was perfect.”

He thinks I’m perfect!

“And because of this … unusual perfection, a very rich Japanese merchant and his wife, a Swiss, chose her as the vessel to carry their baby. She was delighted but had so many questions. And these were not usual questions. She wanted to know how the two of them had met and why they couldn’t have the baby on their own. Isn’t that odd, Kashi?”

Kashi knows she should say something but she feels still and her throat, dry.

“Well, maybe that’s not too odd and I’d feel the same except that she got a hold of the would-be-mother’s cell. None of the women here are permitted any sort of direct contact with the would-be parents of the babies they’re carrying. And perhaps this rule has been put into place because of this very incident that I’m about to tell you.”

Dr Roy touches her then, for the first time. He lifts one of her elbows and slides it down, and then does the same with the other, so that Kashi is on her back again. He turns around and walks to his chair, sitting down. Lifting her kameez up, he peers inside.

“So she started texting her, freely. And the strangest thing – the would-be mother was replying. Poor lady, I think she was just very eager for a baby. Didn’t want to upset the woman who was carrying it for her. That’s my best guess.”

There’s a pinch and a tug in between Kashi’s legs. She tenses up. Dr Roy pats her leg. She releases, pushes her back into the table and tries to breathe slow and deep.

“Next thing you know,” he continues, “the Swiss woman is sending this girl old photos of her husband. Apparently her grandmother had told her that babies end up resembling whatever their mothers think a lot about during the gestation. So this innocent Swiss woman is sending photos of her husband to the surrogate. Photos of him as a boy, as a young man in the army, their wedding, and so on. And this girl just stares at them all day long, scrolling through her phone back and forth for hours on end, all while she grows perfectly round, the baby kicking up a happy storm.”

Dr Roy’s fingers are inside Kashi now, pushing deeper. She winces, wants to scream. This is nothing like any kind of sex has ever felt. Of course, she is aware this isn’t sex.

“This continues for weeks like that – the girl’s absurd spiral of questioning. But she’s not a bit satisfied. She messages the Swiss woman asking about where they live and what it’s like there, down to the details about where everything is on their estate, which other people frequent the property and how many servants they have, even house pets, all their names, their appearances, so on and so forth. As her final trimester approaches, the girl’s got all these photos on her phone that are small windows into the life of this Japanese merchant and Swiss woman. It’s no longer just photos of the would-be-father. There are photos of all his friends, family, the house help, his pets!”

Dr Roy still hasn’t removed his fingers but Kashi is no longer uneasy. There is a strange comfort, a heaviness, an assurance where there was, only moments ago, gut-churning pain.

“Really, I’m still unable to make sense of what happened next. When the baby was born, the Japanese merchant was very upset with his wife. He claimed the child looked like their cook and that the Swiss woman had done some strange finagling of vials in order to cheat him out of his wealth and run off with her lover, the lover being, supposedly, the man who made their teriyaki and tartiflette!”

Dr Roy’s fingers slip out of Kashi. He removes the gloves and throws them in the wastebasket. Picking up a pen, he scribbles some notes on his papers and then turns to look at Kashi again.

“Naturally, the Swiss woman was distraught. Her husband boarded the next flight and was out of there, intent on a divorce. She took her baby and went to a nearby hotel. But this girl, Kashi, so perfect once, and still quite beautiful but utterly exhausted from childbirth – she was broken. She felt she’d been the cause of something terrible. She couldn’t live with that.”

“Did she kill herself?” Kashi blurts out.

Dr Roy laughs. Hearty and round, like a deep bell. “She ran off in search of the woman. Our staff found her, of course; that very evening, in fact. She was muttering something about the mother feeding the baby from a bottle and how the bottle was not white but pink. All very strange. I was not the main doctor here then, but my colleague informed me about this before he took me on. It’s unfortunate. Now, what do you think I’d like you to understand from this?”

“You didn’t finish,” Kashi says, sitting up, still without pants. “What happened to her after–”

Dr Roy presses his pen to her lips. “You don’t seem to have gotten the point, then.”

Pinky’s lying on Kashi’s bed. “It stopped when I was about to tell him,” she insists.

“How can something like that just stop! If you don’t tell him, I will.”

“Oh, just a few weeks here and now you’re some kind of spy?”

Pinky groans and squeezes her stomach.

“See,” Kashi says. “It’s still happening.”

“No!” Pinky squeals.

“I’m going to tell him right now.”

“He’s not here!”

“He gave me a number I can call if I want to reach him.”

Kashi’s standing up now and about to open the door when Pinky grabs her from behind. She pins her to the door. “Oh, so you’re cell-to-cell now, huh? Well, he’s given me more than a number.”

“You’re lying,” Kashi says.

“And you’re delusional. You think Dr Roy loves you or something? That you’ll pop a few pretty white babies out and then he’ll give you a gold star and a diamond ring and a mangal-sutra?”

Kashi tries to shove Pinky away but she’s surprisingly strong.

“What,” Pinky jeers, “can’t fight off a pregnant woman?”

“You,” Kashi breathes and pushes, “are probably not even pregnant!”

They’re both on the bed now, Kashi on top of Pinky though a little below her torso so as to not press down on the bump.

Pinky licks her lips and straightens her back on Kashi’s bed. “Ohhh, Dr Roy,” she moans, rolling the r. “Please, why do you need to impregnate me with a needle, can’t you do it yourself with your big hard–”

Kashi grabs a pillow and hits Pinky with it a few times. She feels a stir of joy unlike anything she’s felt before.

“I need you to do something,” Pinky says between the soft thuds of the pillow on her body. “Stop, serious, serious, god promise.”

Kashi sits back on her knees and pulls Pinky up. Pinky’s holding her stomach and trying not to wince. The two look at each other, their breaths filling the silent, dark room with a mild, rhythmic whirr.

“Tomorrow morning when it’s time for the check-up, I need you to distract Dr Roy for a little while. Please?”

Kashi feels a little cold. Pinky grabs her hand and holds it to her belly. “Feel, feel,” she says, her face dazzling with a grin. “First movements! See, you’re magic. I know you can help us.”

“But why?”

“I don’t want him to check me this week. If he spends longer with you than normal, he won’t have time to see me tomorrow. And the baby’s moving already, you felt that right?”

Kashi nods. The flicker of the tremor in Pinky’s belly had been brief but vibrant, a swish and swirl.

“See,” Pinky continues, “Dr Roy likes to be efficient. He might think there’s a bigger problem than there is. Then he’ll order tests to make sure. But those tests can actually make the miscarriage happen. I don’t think my body can take a third one in so short a time.”

Kashi nods slowly. Pinky touches her cheek and leans in closer, kissing Kashi, right on the lips, just like that, a little peck, then more and more and then it’s all tongue and lips and saliva mixing together. Kashi gently pushes Pinky back on the bed and pulls her salwar down. She feels a little like Dr Roy, and she actually thinks this in her head, pretends to be Dr Roy. This thrills her. Kashi bends down to kiss Pinky more but startles back. In between her dark, dry legs are long, white, bloody feathers, moving a little, as though wanting to fly off into the wind.

The following day, Kashi can’t stop clasping and unclasping her left hand with her right and then her right with her left. A woman who looks like she might burst with a baby any moment now is in front of her. Pinky is behind her. Kashi hates it that Pinky’s asked her to do anything at all. Her stomach turns as though there were a little windmill inside her. Why can’t Pinky just run away herself if she’s afraid of what Dr Roy will do? Again, Kashi’s let herself get all caught up in another’s problems.

She never believed it when her mother yelled at her about being fat-brained. Those are the words she used. You look like a skeleton but you’re so fat-brained. Or, All the fat’s gone to the brain, none on the bones. People will think I starve you and make you work. They don’t know that you don’t have a head on you to do any kind of work. Got you that job as a tutor at that nice house and the lady sent you home that very hour. What did you do there, huh? Bas, Bollywood dreams and boys and nothing else. Why do I even send you to school? Do you know what the fees are! And on and on it went like this. Kashi learned to block her out, thinking of her mother as a giant fly buzzing around. She’d sit beneath the fan in their one-room house and watch it spin its slow, white circle, around and around, the air gathering and dissipating. If I were a little lighter, she’d think, I’d fly away right now thanks to this fan.

But now she feels that her mother was right. And even that her mother had predicted this. Maybe here you’ll get some sense. That is, if you don’t get tangled up in something else. At least you’ll know all I did to help you. And, one of her favorite lines, when you have your own kids, you’ll see. God forbid you have a girl too, then you’ll see what it’s like. You’ll see.

Pinky touches her shoulder from behind and Kashi is pulled out of her stupor. Pinky’s hand’s on her stomach again and her eyes are searching for some kind of assurance. She’s so much shorter than Kashi, the top of her frizzy black head barely making it to Kashi’s shoulders. Kashi nods slightly. Pinky’s face shines with a smile. Her teeth are a little jaggedy too, now that Kashi looks closer. Her mouth, small and round and deep pink inside, her tongue perfuming the air with peaches – the only thing Pinky’s been eating since that day in the bathroom.

The other woman has come out by now, a grey lollipop in her hand. Kashi takes a deep breath and enters Dr Roy’s office. He’s sitting on his table writing notes. Always writing notes. Maybe that’s something she can do to distract him. Ask him about what he’s writing. But then she remembers what happened the last time, the story he told her. He’d be disappointed. Dr Roy looks at her now and gestures for her to sit down. His green eyes, oh how could she disappoint his green eyes?

“Your eyes,” Kashi says, her cheeks burning pink. “Are … are you from Kashmir?”

Dr Roy tilts his head a little and puts his pen down. “Yes,” he says. “Ma is Kashmiri. Dr Ravi Roy, my father, was from Kolkata.”

“That’s why,” Kashi says, smiling. Did she brush her teeth this morning? Yes, she did, she and Pinky went to the bathroom together and … she and Pinky–

“Your eyes are very beautiful too, Kashi,” Dr Roy says.

This is all she’s wanted, really. To sit across from someone and tell him about his eyes and he tells you about your eyes and you two just sit there and look eye-to-eye for the longest time and then someone turns the lights off and the moon is out and there’s music and rain and–

“Today’s an important day,” Dr Roy says.

Kashi’s body stiffens. “The procedure?”

Dr Roy nods. “Your body’s responding well. And you’re ovulating right now. My guess is we inseminate you in the next few minutes, the embryo will flourish. Next thing you know, we’ll be using that machine over there on you.”

Kashi turns to look at what Dr Roy’s pointing at – a large rectangular contraption on wheels and, hanging off a thick grey wire, something resembling a cross between a stethoscope and a microphone.

“The doppler,” Dr Roy says. “We’ll be able to hear the baby’s heart at just six or seven weeks. It reminds me of a wild horse running along endless paddocks.”

This is something so particular to Dr Roy. He’s like Gulzar. Kashi’s heart does a little dance. Maybe she can say this to him … does that count as a distraction even if she really means it?

“I can’t help but notice your mind’s elsewhere,” Dr Roy says. He looks concerned, with only a flicker of harshness in his eyebrows.

“Oh,” Kashi sighs. “It’s just that, well, Dr Roy … my mother used to tell me that babies—even in the womb, you know, when they’re just eggs or skeleton-like, they know where they come from. Isn’t that strange? Because sometimes I think even I don’t know where I came from. I mean, I know who my mother and father are. But I don’t think they loved each other very much. And that’s why, I always thought…well, I’ve already told you that, I mean…is it terrible to ask you if you remember what I said? About what I want, or thought I always wanted…”

Kashi doesn’t know if she should finish this sentence. For all she knows, Pinky’s already made a run for it. Or maybe Pinky isn’t running anywhere at all. She just needs to not be seen for this check-up. But what will happen in one week? If the baby falls out of her is she planning to scoop it up and put it back inside her and then stitch up her body so it doesn’t happen again? Kashi really is fat-brained. She hasn’t even asked Pinky her plan. Maybe Pinky did some black magic on her. That’s the only reason Kashi even wanted to kiss her in the first place. Maybe she’s making her see things. Her mother always told her that women like that can make you see things. She never specified what those things were but Kashi thinks bloody feathers could be something a chureil might show you with her kala-jadu. But Pinky did look distressed as she clenched her stomach. And the blood was very real, the smell, the drip drip drip and then the swift, soft feathers, so white, almost perfect.

Perfect, that’s what Dr Roy had said to her when he’d told her the story of that other woman. Kashi thinks about the other woman and all the other other women that have passed through the halls of the hostel, growing big with babies they’d never keep.

“Kashi?” he says now. He stands up and pulls her to her feet. He’s so much taller than her. She stares into his eyes.

“For nine months,” she says.

“More or less, but nine months is considered perfect.”

There’s that word again. Her heart is in her stomach, rioting with a pitchfork.

Kashi hears a distant cough, the timbre of Pinky’s voice, and then a gush, water crackling to the ground, her footsteps, running wildly, wild horses on a paddock.

“I want to be perfect.”

Dr Roy smiles. “You are! Come now, lie down.”

“Wait, Dr Roy–”

How can she distract anyone? She is so distracted herself. Fat-fat-fat-brained girl. If she has a girl, she’ll know, know what it’s like.

“Kashi, please, we need to get to the procedure.”

“If I’m so perfect, why don’t you kiss me?” she blurts out.

Dr Roy lifts an eyebrow and Kashi’s whole body shivers. She wishes she’d asked Pinky exactly how long of a distraction she needs. She wishes she could just ignore the whole thing and get the baby needled into her and stay quiet and still, dreaming of floating away like a feather in the wind. A feather, the feathers, the wind, a window.

Kashi’s never noticed it before—the big, wide window behind Dr Roy’s desk. Perhaps because he’s always kept the curtains drawn. But now the sun is gone, the monsoon is awake, the sky is black like ash dissolved to the bottom of the ocean, and there is a stillness in the air that you could reach out and pop if you had something sharp enough.

“That wouldn’t be very professional, Kashi,” Dr Roy says, even as he inches closer to her.

He comes to her, angling his body away from the window. She doesn’t know why she does this but she knows she can’t let him turn around to see outside. She hears the cough again, outside, but now it’s louder, slowly unfolding into a simper and then a wail, unfurling, lengthening.

Dr Roy looks to the door, but Kashi pulls him close. This isn’t the first time she’s kissed a man because she wanted something from him. But what does Kashi want from Dr Roy? Nothing that she can define. And then as she’s kissing him, she thinks about the kiss between her and Pinky, how much softer it was and wetter, too. Dr Roy holds Kashi’s waist and this thrills her enough to look away from the window herself. She reaches her hands down to his pants, and feels a pager tucked into his belt. She slides her hands over to the buckle but something makes her eyes open wide. A glint of white light in the black sky, a confetti of red feathers, and then Pinky’s voice writhing and rising all around them. And then the sky explodes, brilliant with black flames. Dr Roy pulls back and turns around. Kashi teeters on her heels and falls backward a little but catches herself with the chair. Her lips are burning. She runs to the window and looks out, shouldering Dr Roy in the process. He doesn’t seem to care, he’s frantically beeping his pager. Kashi leans on the windowsill and sighs.

A thousand starlings fill the sky, swirling and careening with the wind, moving at first into a hive of wing and song, and then disbanding, meandering, falling like a dark deck of cards the clouds are shuffling. Kashi’s heart beats faster. She feels the starlings, multiplying and mirroring into infinity, resemble the clusters of golden fish in the sapphire ponds of Amritsar, glazed black beneath the shadow of devotees dropping breadcrumbs into the water. Kashi’s only been there once, but now the world outside this window is a temple and the avatar of the Lord is in the unblinking eyes of these birds. Kashi looks around on the ground and in the sky and up and down again, trying to find the origin of this never-ending, undulating cauldron of birds susurrating through the sky. Her gaze at last rests on the roots of a crooked banyan tree, cracked in the middle as though by lightning and now laying split open on the wet asphalt. There, out of reach but entirely visible, on the edge of the footpath, at the smoke-thin end of the murmuration is Pinky, her legs spread apart, back arched, forehead beaded in sweat, a mad grin on her lips. Starlings fall out of her as blue eggs that burst open and rise into the sky, wings whorling up and inking the air, creating dazzling silver dust clouds in their wake.

Kashi laughs. She wants to reach out and touch the birds just as she did the feathers, wants to reach out and touch Pinky. As though by instinct, she turns around, but Dr Roy is no longer there. She can hear the hullabaloo outside, the muffled screams and crazed, rageful shouts, the blame being exchanged between important people, the useless requests to be quiet, hush, hush, don’t ask questions, get the girl, get the girl, the baby, what baby, the babies, what babies, where, where, nowhere, not here, not now. Kashi wants to urge Pinky to get up and run away but she doesn’t have to. Perhaps this will be a story Dr Roy tells to another girl who comes in here, months or years later. How a girl gave birth to strange birds and then was flown up and away by them, disappearing into the universe like chimney smoke, wisp, wisp, snuff, snuff, gone, forever. Or maybe they wouldn’t want to talk about it. Maybe they’d change the story a little, as necessary, to ensure the new girl delivers a perfect baby.

Kashi touches her belly, imagines a baby, white as a bowl of cream. She grimaces. She’s always thought she needs to be as light as the wind to escape. She closes her eyes, and thinks about whales, big as many buses with hearts the size of elephants, chugging through the ocean, blue and infinite.