Doux

Sisterhood

We met in a dark room, her eyebrows
arched like Lakshman's bow, I could
make out the shape of her face as she told
me stories from her childhood, how she
had destroyed a whole tomato field in one
afternoon. She still bears the marks of
her victory on her knuckles. I wished I had
her eyes, deep and black, instead
of my retro-frame spectacles that sit on
my nose like an identity and mark me as
another avante-garde intellectual from
the city. I come from the musty bookshop
crumbling yellow pages of College Street.
Under her long hair like a curtain and floral print
nightie, she is made from the Earth. She
was waiting to be married. She was
Draupadi, with her five husbands, and
I was Radha the abandoned lover. The only
thing we had in common was everything
that made us woman. A 60s sitcom played
on the television, I knew the script by
heart. She didn't care for it. The television
was the only light in the room. We called
each other sister, but she was Cleopatra
and I was Nefertiti.