“Yes. And these churidars,” he said, holding up a pair of green pants. I had never worn pants before. They were tight at the ankles and waist, but loose and airy in the legs for quick movement. With a white piece of cloth, or muretha, tied around my head to keep the sweat from dripping into my eyes, I felt powerful.
But the truth of it was far different: nothing is less glamorous than being woken from your bed in the predawn chill to set up a target and shoot arrows at it not once, but a hundred, even two hundred times, until all of your shots hit their mark. In the summers, the heat in my village was suffocating. In the winters, when the wind blew like a river of cold air, I could feel it in my bones, no matter how many layers I would dress myself in. When you’re standing in an open courtyard with a frozen scimitar in your hands, fighting against a man who is more than three times your size, there is very little that feels like something out of The Three Musketeers. It is hard, grueling work.
But I learned how to fight using only a stick. And how to sever a man’s head with a single stroke of my sword. And in case I was ever rendered weaponless, I learned how to defend myself with punches, kicks, choke holds, and shoulder grabs. Day after day I practiced these moves until they came as effortlessly to me as walking or running.
And over several years, I metamorphosed from Sita the child into someone else. At first, the changes were subtle. Muscles appeared in my arms and legs that had never been defined before. My hands, which had once been full and soft, grew strong and callused. Then, the physical changes became more obvious. My waist grew narrower, my cheeks more hollow. The roundness of childhood was gone. In its place was a tall, lean girl who could carry heavy rocks from one end of the courtyard to another, morning after morning, and still not feel fatigued. She was a girl who could swing a metal sword, carry a man’s burden of wheat on her back, and lift multiple buckets of water with both arms. Sita the child could do none of these things. She’d been an average girl with average strength. Now, I was probably the strongest woman in Barwa Sagar.
On the first morning I bled, I told Avani, who let Grandmother know I had become a woman. It felt more frightening to me than anything I had learned with Shivaji in the courtyard, and Grandmother’s rage didn’t help. I could hear her in the kitchen, shouting at Avani, “Well, it’s all over now. There’s not a man in Barwa Sagar we could trick into taking her.”
I was in too much pain to see Shivaji that day. Instead, I stood in front of my small basket of playthings and ran my hands over each one in turn. When I was a little girl, my father had given me two cloth dolls, a wooden horse, and a small block carved into the shape of a bear. I took out the doll with long black hair and held her in my lap. I could remember how I used to give the doll a voice and walk her around my room, but doing this now seemed silly. I was twelve years old.
I sat at my desk and thought about other girls my age. The ones who had become women, like me, were preparing to leave their homes, overseeing the packing of their bridal chests and saying farewell to their families. In this way, I was much luckier than they were. I would never have to bid Father good-bye, knowing that the next time I would see him would likely be on his funeral pyre. I could stay in his home, watch Anuja grow, sleep in my own bed, and eat Avani’s mushy lentils until I undertook the rani’s trial, which might not be called for many years yet. But then, if I succeeded in becoming a member of the Durga Dal, I would also never marry. And I would certainly never have children. I would belong to the rani from that moment on.
“What are you doing?” Anuja asked, joining me in my room. She was three and always filled with questions, like a lidded pot holding back too much steam.
“Thinking.”
Anuja climbed onto my lap. “Can I think with you?”
She not only had Mother’s delicate face, but her tenderness, too. She always wanted to know why Grandmother yelled at her or why the baby bird outside our window had died. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow, Hamlet says. But there was no explaining that to her. “Yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then curiosity got the better of her. “Why aren’t you practicing with Shivaji?”
“Because he gave me the day off,” I improvised. “He said, ‘Go and find Anuja and tell her that today Sita is going to teach her how to hold a sword.’ ”
“No swords.” My sister shook her curly head. “I want to play with Mooli.” This was her toy cat, since real cats weren’t allowed in our house.
“But we played with Mooli yesterday.”
She snuggled her head against my chest. “Then will you read me a story?”