“She is beautiful from the left, yes?”

“Very beautiful.”

“From the right, she is plain, but from the left, she will unfold like the lotus.” Her mother was always fond of this speech. It was Anjana’s role to smile. “You should be sure to put her on the right side of the bed, at the right time of the month!”

The women laughed, having had their last period many years ago, and Alastair had the decency to blush and smile shyly. To a man, a woman’s beauty was the apogee of their desires. It was an unquestionable, valued thing. But to a woman, the measure of such beauty was not inherent. They had to be taught where they stood, what it was about them that, through no fault of their own, made them worth having. Anjana imagined a girl covered with warts and with patches of hair missing, surrounded her with people who all the while praised the number of warts she had and the daring patches on her head. The girl would be utterly convinced her beauty deserved such praise. “Other girls have such plain, uninteresting faces,” they might coo, “and their hair is such a thick, tangled mat. None are as beautiful as you.”

And Anjana was this girl, every time she stood in her mother’s presence. It did not matter how she might look to herself, to her husband. From the left, she was plain, and then they would all have tea.
Alastair had obviously prepared. He knew her father’s favourite cricketers, knew the most innocuous news in their family. He knew even what sort of man he was to be if he were to court her, because he too had a place prepared for him.

While he asked about naan, Anjana looked outside at the rows of houses facing her. At the many similar families gathering, eating, never saying an unexpected word. At the mothers and grandmothers and fading pictures of women who had sat where she sat. Endured mothers like hers. She felt an overwhelming urge to live past them. To see them wither and fade away into curious pictures in a photo album, while she grew past the shape of them into something new.

“I think your mother is wrong,” he said from behind her.  They were alone in the kitchen, a scandalous taboo, but engineered nonetheless. She was meant to raise her eyebrows, turn about slowly, and adopt a bright, thrilled air that they should be alone together. No one had ever told her to do this. It had been done by one girl, perhaps, a thousand years ago. Everything else came after.
“How do you mean?”

“She says you are only beautiful from the right, but I think you are beautiful from every direction.” This, too, was prepared, but he could not have known that. She worked hard to affix the blush on her cheeks.  

“You should not say such things,” Anjana whispered.

“I would say them to you all the days of my life. I want to marry you, Anjana.” And though she had seen, in movies, that clucking mothers might wait behind the door, listening to what took place, Anjana had no such illusions. She knew full well that her mother, and all the attendant women that went along with her, were calmly sipping their Darjeeling in the next room. They drank very quietly. They knew exactly what news they were about to receive.

And in the empty moment where Anjana was expected to answer, she wondered how it might be possible to say no. He was not a bad man, he would never hurt her, never raise his voice to her unless she did first. If she were to say no, she would have to have a reason. And then everyone would have to know her reason. And she might never marry after saying such a thing. She could not live past it. There was only the one choice; that was all he handed her.  

Their wedding was beautiful, and so was she. Draped in shimmering silk the color of a river, showering the floor in rose petals, even the most ugly of her aunts and uncles looked like an leaf fluttering in the wind. It was on her wedding day that she learned, through her ugliest, sweetest uncle, that the end of the Kali Yuga was upon them.  

“All the godlessness, the selfishness of this age will melt away. The Kali Yuga will pass, and we will know the divine again.”

“What is the Kali Yuga?” she had asked him.  He had several bottles of Kingfisher lined nearby, and one still in his hand.  

“An age of debauchery and sin. Thousands and thousands of years long. We are aware only of a physical world. Flesh and pleasure and pain. And then, at the bottom of our godless ways, the wheel turns, a new age starts and we begin the Dvapara. An age of great faith. Great faith.”
“Will that be the end?”

He laughed, and his breath was rich with the smell of cardamom. “No, the yugas are cycles. One folds into another like seasons. It has been like this since the beginning.”

“How long?”

“Thousands of years. Millions. It has no end.”

Something inside Anjana tightened, retracted. This was the last of the godless, depraved ways. They would not come again for thousands of years. Tens of thousands. She could not live that long, no matter how hard she tried. There was much to do.

The winner of EYE WEEKLY'S short-story contest: Daniel Scott Tysdal's "What Is Missing"

Second runner-up: Grace O'Connell's "Annie, You Foolish Girl, I Love You"