Aerogrammes and Other Stories

Light & Luminous




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Minal Auntie didn’t sleep last night, imagining the moment she would be called to the stage and handed the trophy that has eluded her for the past four years. But now, as the competition wears on and one routine follows another, she grows drowsy. Her eyelids feel leaden. Next to her, a mother slings a towel over her shoulder and begins breast-feeding her baby beneath it, a bored look on her face.

Minal Auntie leans away from the suckling sounds and opens the program. She finds her school—“Illinois Academy of Indian Classical Dance”—and beneath it: “Minal Raman, director.” Her girls are up next.

Every year, Minal Auntie ponders whether to withdraw her students from the All-India Talent Showcase, an annual event that is thick with Indians and thin on talent. In her opinion, there are far too many routines featuring untrained folk and “fusion” dancers, like the six girls currently taking up space on the stage, shimmying and writhing to a tabla-laced rap song. Last year Minal Auntie complained about a similarly indecent number whose song included the lines “He fills my cup. / I like it rough.” To no avail. The worst part is watching tubby little Sanjali Kapoor thrust her hips this way and that, utterly unconvinced by her own sex appeal.

For the past two years, the trophy for Best Group Dance has gone to Twinkle Sharma of Little Star Studios. When Little Star opened three years ago, Minal Auntie predicted a quick and happy collapse; who needed a teacher for raas and bhangra and Bollywood when one could so easily mimic those dances from movies or cousins? Somehow, Little Star swelled with more students every year, all of them deluded by Twinkle’s oft-repeated claim to having danced in Bollywood movies with the likes of Madhuri and Sri Devi. Whole legions have danced with Madhuri and Sri Devi, if “behind” is the same as “with.”

At last, the belly dancers scuttle into the wings. After a dramatic pause, Minal Auntie’s thirteen girls file across the stage, hands tucked at their waists, their ghungroo jingling at their ankles. Minal Auntie sits up and buries her hands in her lap.

First the girls do namaste, ceremoniously apologizing to the earth for the mistakes of their feet, touching fingertips to floor to eyelids. The gilded pleats of their costumes blossom open when they bend, close as they rise with their palms pressed together. They stand straight, knees locked, and wait. A few cheerful screams shoot through the dark: “Pinky! … Reshma! … Aarti!”

Aarti is Minal Auntie’s grandniece, a new student, and the worst in the class. Minal Auntie can pick her out of the group at a glance: a dark, big-boned girl who copes with her size by slouching. Such a shame, to be born that dark. Minal Auntie knows, because she is equally dark, the black-brown of tamarind, a hue that surpasses the spectrum of foundation colors sold at Walmart, even those under the brand called Nubian Queen.

But this is where the similarities end; Aarti has no grace, no confidence, no future on the stage. Her mother still maintains the belief that somewhere in the twisted ladder of her little girl’s DNA are the traits of a dancer. “What she needs is encouragement, chachy,” said Lata to Minal Auntie, leaning on a term of endearment she employs in times of need.

So to appease her niece, Minal Auntie has positioned Aarti in the front and center, just for the opening of the dance. It is the simplest section of the whole routine, the part they have drilled the most.

From five rows away, Minal Auntie can see Aarti’s pleats all atremble.

The girls begin the jatiswaram with only their necks ticking from side to side. To Minal Auntie’s great relief, every neck is on point, not one lazy neck among them. The girls open their arms, palms stiff and arched. All right arms move like the oars of a mighty ship, circling the air to the held note of a woman’s voice. Thirteen left arms sweep another circle with equal precision.

Soon enough, the ship breaks down. Twelve of the girls gather speed along with the beat, their gazes following the motions of their hands, their feet striking out and stamping to a single rhythm. Aarti is obeying the same rhythm, but with steps that belong to a later sequence. At first, it seems that her peers are her backup dancers, and she has come up with a solo of her own. She soldiers on, her eyes kohl-lined and blank, her lips a wide, terrified smear of red.

Pinky mutters something at Aarti, who looks over her shoulder and slows, like a robot powering down, then falls in step with the rest. By now, her smile is long gone. Minal Auntie knows the feeling: there is no lonelier place in the world than where Aarti is standing now. The girls disperse into the next formation, and Aarti shuttles to the back, where she will remain for the rest of the dance.

At home, Minal Auntie maps out the formations of the next dance she will teach to her class, for the India Day Festival two months from now. She pencils X’s and O’s on a yellow legal pad and intricate arrows between them. One of the O’s is underlined. Every X and O has a chance in the front, except for the O, who will enjoy one brief moment in a middle line but otherwise will be relegated to the back. This O is Aarti.

Had Minal Auntie known that Aarti was the sort of student who needed underlining, she would have placed her in the beginner class. But Lata claimed that her daughter had attended a number of excellent dance camps in Ohio, under the auspices of some midwestern charlatan who refused to teach her students the proper names for each hand gesture. Instead of Pathaka, Alapadma, and Katakamukha, Aarti calls them Flat Hand, Flower Hand, and Deer Hand. She has never learned to hold her knees out when she bends them; after only a minute of aramandi, her knees cave in. At the school where Minal Auntie trained as a girl, Aarti’s calves would have suffered enough raps to mottle them black and blue.

“That’s terrible,” Lata says when Minal Auntie brags about her old bruises and blisters. “Thank god we don’t live in Chennai.”

Lata utters these remarks and frowns at her watch, disappointed, as always, by the time. She has just arrived to pick up Aarti from dance class, but already she has to run. In fact, it is rare for Lata to enter the house at all; she usually beeps and waves from her minivan as the door slides shut behind Aarti. But today Lata has a favor to ask: Can Minal Auntie babysit Aarti two afternoons a week? Lata is taking an income tax course and doesn’t want to waste ten bucks an hour on a babysitter.

“I don’t know,” Minal Auntie hedges, “I’m very busy these days.”

“Oh, if you have another class, she’ll sit upstairs and read or something.”

Minal Auntie plucks at the frayed edge of her sari pallu. “I am in a book club. We get together in different-different houses. Members only.”

“A book club?” Lata’s eyes grow round and curious. “With who?”

Lata asks question after question, which Minal Auntie deflects with short answers. (Neighbors … Weekly … Whatever Oprah suggests.) “That’s wonderful,” Lata says, with a cloying delight that barely hides her disbelief. Just to end the conversation, Minal Auntie agrees to Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The most popular magazines at Foodfest are the ones that offer help. The experts grin from every cover, beaming with the belief that anyone can drop fifty pounds or build their own patio or achieve a positive outlook. Minal Auntie turns her back on her register and clutches her arms against the chill gusting from the air conditioners. In passing, the manager taps his own name tag, BILL, and lifts his eyebrows expectantly. She takes the button out of her pocket and pins it to her red Foodfest smock, just above her own name tag. AM I SMILING? the button reads. IF NOT, YOU GET HALF OFF.

There is little to smile about at Foodfest, where the automated registers are always beeping with customers eager to scan and bag their own items. Half the time, they jab the wrong buttons and stand there bleating for help until Minal Auntie comes to the rescue.

The cashiers have been reduced to two per shift. Minal Auntie usually finds herself paired with Krista, a black college student with the flawless air of a pageant queen, every hair slicked flat and in place. Even her eyebrows are perfect. “I get them threaded at Devon Avenue,” she says, when Minal Auntie asks if she plucks. “How come you don’t go to them? That’s your people.”

“Where is the time?” Minal Auntie says. Truthfully, she could care less about threading. Bushy eyebrows are the least of her problems.

Yesterday evening, another student quit her school in favor of Little Star Studios. Over the phone, Mrs. Tajudeen had babbled on and on about the “fun and frolic” in folk dance. “Your bharata natyam classes are becoming too serious for Tikku!” she chided lightly, while Minal Auntie paced the small square of her linoleum kitchen floor. She came close to confessing everything if only to hold on to one more student—how she had trouble making her mortgage payments last year, how she was forced to find a second income, how the employment agency had deemed her unskilled.

Now here she is at Foodfest, a half hour away from her home, a safe distance from the friends and acquaintances who would never guess what she has become. She punches numbers in the register and shoves the cash drawer closed when it lunges out at her. She tries to avert her gaze from the lunch station opposite, where headless chickens in a glass coffin are spinning torpidly on spits. Directly above the coffin is the clock, which moves even more slowly. After work, she will have to speed all the way back and pick up Aarti.

Krista unscrews a small gold tin of lip gloss and holds it out to Minal Auntie. “Try this. It’ll look good on you.”

Minal Auntie frowns. “It makes your lips look wet.”

“That’s the point. It’s called Wetslicks.”

Out of boredom, Minal Auntie dabs some balm over her lips. “I’m probably too old for those things.”

“How old?”

“Forty-eight.” Minal Auntie smacks her lips together. “So? How is it?”

“Sexy,” Krista says, working her eyebrows up and down. She hands Minal Auntie a compact from her purse. In the little round mirror, Minal Auntie’s lips look glazed with Krispy Kreme frosting.

“Right?” Krista says.

Minal Auntie nods. When Krista isn’t looking, she wipes her lips against the back of her hand, leaving a gooey streak of glitter.

Minal Auntie screeches up to Aarti’s house and beeps twice. Lata and Aarti tumble out the door, Lata bolting for her car with a hasty wave in Minal Auntie’s direction. “Sorry, Auntie! Can’t talk, I’m late!” Before Minal Auntie can apologize, Lata has shut the door of her minivan.

Aarti climbs into Minal Auntie’s car with a laminated library book on her lap, her finger holding her place. Her face looks ghostly pale, as if covered in a film of dust, a different color from her throat. “What happened to you?” Minal Auntie asks.

“Nothing,” Aarti mumbles defensively. She cracks open her book and doesn’t look up. The car has filled with the scent of Pond’s talcum powder, and though Minal Auntie is sure that its source is sitting next to her, she hasn’t the energy to question the girl. For the past thirty minutes, Minal Auntie has been gripping the wheel, weaving and speeding to get here. Now she feels drained, distant from the world reeling past her window, a chicken spinning around on a stick.

“Does it look bad?” Aarti asks suddenly.

Minal Auntie blinks at her; the world draws focus. She tries a tactful approach: “You don’t look like you, raja.” She gives the girl a sideways smile, but Aarti is squinting at something on Minal Auntie’s shoulder.

“What’s your button say, Auntie?”

Minal Auntie glances down at the thing. How did she pin it to her sweater when she has always, always pinned it to her smock? Next time she sees Bill, she will pin it to his forehead. “I found it on the ground. I liked the message.”

Aarti leans in to read it. “Am I smiling …?”

“Let’s stop at the IndoPak store. Do you like eating idli-sambar?” Aarti begins a polite refusal, while Minal Auntie wrenches the pin from her shoulder so hastily she knows she’s pulled a thread.

Like a pro, Minal Auntie enters at one end of the IndoPak Grocery and snakes her way up and down the dusty aisles without once doubling back, filling her jute bag with masalas, chai powder, and masoor dal, until she reaches the produce section, where no bruise or tenderness escapes her appraisal of okra. She arrives in the last aisle, the toiletries section, to find Aarti with a box of Light & Luminous in her hand.

Minal Auntie knows the commercial. Two girls, one fair-skinned and one nut-brown, go to a perfume counter. Brown Girl catches her reflection in the mirror and looks away with the disappointment of a girl forbidden to play outside. Fair Girl confides that her own skin used to be similarly afflicted until she tried Light & Luminous. The commercial shows a brown patch of skin, its brownness lifted away in a whirlwind of flaky debris to reveal a paler shade beneath. Sometime later, the two girls joyfully reunite at the perfume counter, their skin so china white one can hardly be distinguished from the other.

“What do you want with that?” Minal Auntie asks.

Aarti looks up with a nervous laugh. “Do you think it works?”

“It’s all chemicals. Put it back.”

Aarti obeys but not without one last glance at the name on the box. She follows Minal Auntie through the checkout counter, helps carry the bags to the car, and says nothing until they are halfway home.

“A kid at school started calling me Well Done,” Aarti says. “I asked him why, and he goes, ‘Cause your mom left you in the oven too long.’ ”

Aarti plucks at the laminated plastic of her book. Minal Auntie can think of nothing to say.

“I’m not saying I wanna be super pale. I just want, you know, a normal color.”

Minal Auntie studies the road for a while. At last, she says, “Your color is your color. There is nothing to do about it.” She speaks from a place of impatience and experience, having wasted years on a similar quest for an antidote. She has smeared the skin of boiled milk onto her cheeks; she has stirred pinches of gold dust into her tea. When she was a child, a neighbor boy, Velu, insisted that if she stood outside at night, he could see only her teeth and the whites of her eyes.

For a moment, Minal Auntie feels these secrets on the brink of release—the milk skin, the desperation, the sound of Velu’s voice in her ears—but a pickup truck in front of her brakes suddenly. She honks. The moment is gone.

Class begins as always, students trickling through the sliding door at the back of Minal Auntie’s basement. They shuck their shoes outside. They knot their shawls around their waists.

Minal Auntie is seated directly in front of the mirrors with a wood block and a stick in her hands, next to an electronic box that makes harmonium vibrations. The harmonium box, the block, and the stick are the most hallowed objects in the room. Once, when the stick fell out of Minal Auntie’s hand and Niva Patel absently toed it back to her, Niva was ordered to sit out the next three exercises.

After Minal Auntie pounds the block three times, the girls do namaste, a girl in the back sloppy in scooping forgiveness from the carpet. Afterward, Minal Auntie balances her stick on the block and instructs everyone to be seated. She can always pick out the naturals by the way they hold themselves even in unaware moments, how they stand with their shoulders back, their spines at attention, feet turned out. Overdoing it, Pinky Shahi sinks to the floor with one knee propped up, mimicking a movie courtesan. The graceless ones, like Aarti, collapse and hunch against the walls.

Minal Auntie stands to demonstrate the next sequence in the dance she has been teaching them, set to a bhajan celebrating the devotion of the poet Meerabai to Lord Krishna. Departing from her usual routines, Minal Auntie has choreographed a dance that contains an elaborate drama as its centerpiece, a tale of devotion, poison, and miracle.

There are only four roles—the beautiful Meerabai, her husband the cruel king, and two servants. To show the drama in its entirety, Minal Auntie inhabits all four roles, twirling between avatars. First she is Meerabai fingering her sitar, swaying in ecstatic worship to Lord Krishna, whom she considers her true husband, much to the irritation of her living husband, the king. Then she is the king, spying on his wife’s worship, curling the corner of his mustache between two fingers before stalking away to his rooms. He stirs poison into a bowl of warm milk and summons his two servants. With a spin, Minal Auntie inhabits the servants, who come to the king, bowing; he points the bowl in Meerabai’s direction. They bring the bowl to her. Finally, Minal Auntie is Meerabai, setting her sitar aside. Sensing that her death lies in the bottom of the bowl, Meerabai takes it and looks to the heavens, in fear not of death but of a lifetime of worship cut short. She drinks the poison, and by the intercession of Lord Krishna, she rises, immune to pain, vivified and radiant.

“Okay?” Minal Auntie says, herself again, hands on hips.

“Auntie, that was so good,” Pinky says, the other girls rallying around with affirmations of “Yeah” and “Really good.” “Who gets to be the queen?”

Minal Auntie assigns the roles: Pinky as the king, Neha and Niva as the servants, and—she braces herself for an uprising—Aarti as Meerabai.

The girls look back and forth between Minal Auntie and Aarti, as if to decode the silent conspiracies of blood relations. But Minal Auntie can’t very well explain to them that there is no footwork involved in the Meerabai role, no strict rhythm to obey, and that she will never hear the end of it from Lata if she doesn’t give Aarti a brief, easy moment in the limelight. “Really?” Aarti says, without much gratitude, hugging her knees to her chest.

“What about the rest of us?” asks Nidhi Kulkarni. “Where do we stand?”

“In a semicircle around the actors. Posing as Krishna.” Making a reed flute of her hands, Minal Auntie sweeps the room with a meaningful gaze. “You are all Lord Krishna.”

They stare at her dully.

Nidhi rests her chin in her hand and Reshma picks at her fingernails, but the protest goes no further. Most likely it will carry on once they stuff their feet into their sneakers and shuffle away without tying their laces.

Today, for one day only, Foodfest has put a coupon in the Sunday circular for a sale on plantains—two pounds for the price of one. In the bottom left corner of the coupon, in tiny letters, are the words “Only applicable at the Downers Grove Foodfest.” Additionally crippling to Minal Auntie is the fact that South Indians know at least five ways to consume a plantain: raw, fried, curried, breaded, and steamed.

And so her secret life at Foodfest has come to end.

Mrs. Namboodiri, Mrs. Markose, and Dr. Varghese are among the many Indian acquaintances who inch past Minal Auntie’s cash register that day. They give her, along with their plantains, looks of surprise masked in cheery greeting.

“My cousin,” Minal Auntie keeps saying. “He owns this place.”

They pretend to believe her. Dr. Varghese pats the back of her hand. Each pitying smile is a blow to her heart.

Though she keeps her head down and focuses on the conveyor belt, Minal Auntie cannot ignore the tinkling babble of bracelets that can only belong to Twinkle Sharma.

At first, Twinkle places item after item on the belt without seeming to notice her cashier. They are barely acquaintances but mutually compliant with certain rules of competition, which demand that they speak warmly to each other, like old, intimate friends.

“Good price on the plantains,” Minal Auntie says.

Twinkle stands there, staring, her fingers still wrapped around the handle of a milk jug. “What’s this …?” The question trails off as Twinkle glances down at Minal Auntie’s name tag.

“I am here part-time.”

Twinkle hesitates. “Okay, great!” She places the milk jug on the belt with care. “And how is your school?”

“Great.” Minal Auntie takes the milk and slides the bar code over the red light, sliding it again and again until it beeps. “We will miss Tikku.”

“Yes, she came to see me. Tikku has excellent form.” In earnest, Twinkle adds, “You taught her well, Minal.”

“I had her from when she was small.”

“I know. She’s always saying, ‘But, Twinkle, that’s not the way Minal Auntie does it!’ ”

“You let them call you Twinkle?”

Twinkle shrugs. “I just want them to feel comfortable with me. So they won’t be intimidated when we share the stage.”

“Share what stage?”

“Ah!” Twinkle smacks her forehead. “Stupid me. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“You are the teacher. How can you be in the dance?”

“It’s okay, Minal.”

“But there must be a rule against a teacher being in the dance—”

“I didn’t have a choice. One of my girls dropped out, and we needed an even number, so …” Twinkle waves away all concern. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Taking a bag in each hand, Twinkle remarks on how wonderful it is, running into each other. She clicks away in silver slingbacks, her heels pumiced smooth, her soles soft and uncallused, her toenails pale pink. Those are not the feet of a dancer, Minal Auntie decides, a thought that brings little comfort. She fingers a wedge of lemon she keeps in a plastic cup by her register, to mask the scent of money on her skin.

That afternoon, Minal Auntie installs Aarti in the master bedroom, where she can do her homework in privacy. Minal Auntie opens the curtains so the light falls thick and warm over her walnut desk. Just as Aarti settles into the chair, Minal Auntie notices the yellow sticky note on the corner of the desk (Stay positive, in her own handwriting) and crumples it into her pocket.

Aarti offers to work in the basement, but Minal Auntie says she will be busy choreographing the last portion of the dance. “About that,” Aarti says, wiping her arm back and forth across the desk. “I’m nervous about being Meerabai. I don’t think I’m up to it.”

“If you practice, you can get good at the facial expressions.”

“Nowhere near as good as you.” Minal Auntie hovers in the doorway, suddenly reluctant to leave. “My mom told me what you were like when you were young. She said, ‘When Minal Auntie danced, even the clock stopped to watch.’ ”

Minal Auntie stands still, absorbing those words. They seem to apply to another person altogether, not the woman who drove home from Foodfest earlier today, benumbed by heat and shame. If only, in her youth, she had known how to stand and receive a compliment, rather than ducking below it with self-effacing humility, as if her future would hold an infinite supply of praise. She chants this one in her head—even the clock stopped to watch—and it awakens in her a mild euphoria.

But the feeling dissolves when she descends the basement stairs and stands before the paneled mirrors. Here is her reflection: a flat nose, raisin-colored lips, eyebrows that have never seen a tweezer, and, of course, her skin. She turns her back on the mirrors.

Minal Auntie slides a cassette tape into the stereo. The tape has been re-recorded so many times that the first few sounds are the chaotic remnants of earlier songs. Abruptly the bhajan begins. Minal Auntie closes her eyes and taps her foot as Subbulakshmi’s voice cascades across the opening notes, coursing through the cold air of the basement.

Instead of laying down steps for the ending, Minal Auntie dances through the drama portion. Whatever she did to impress Aarti, she can do better. She can inhabit the ecstasy of Meerabai at her sitar, the innocence with which she presses her hand to her heart when presented with the poison and asks, For me? She can be the king, can sense the hurt behind his anger when he sees his wife praying to her divine husband above. She can even give life to the servants, in whose pitying eyes Meerabai can read her own death.

Over and over, Minal Auntie rewinds the tape and practices with the single-minded purpose that served her well in her youth. Her guru noticed and invited her to perform on a two-week tour through Rajasthan and Delhi. She returned to hear from her cousin that the neighbor boy Velu had gotten engaged. “I always thought he liked you,” her cousin said, and Minal Auntie blushed, several sensations blooming within her—surprise, pride, and, obscurely, hope. Thinking of Velu, from time to time she finds herself ambused by the same emotions, but try as she might, she can barely remember his face.

Minal Auntie decides to play all four roles—the king, Meerabai, and both servants—for the upcoming competition.

“You?” Pinky blurts, crestfallen.

Minal Auntie pins her with a look of quiet authority. “Yes. Me.”

The rest of the class seem a bit puzzled at first, but they carry on without complaint. Aarti is the only one beaming with relief.

Minal Auntie teaches the rest of the dance and has them practice at full tilt. When someone makes a mistake, she strikes the block, wags her stick at the offender, and starts the whole dance over again. She allows only a few minutes of rest between each run-through. Every girl slides to the floor except for Pinky, who sits in a butterfly stretch and brings her forehead down to her feet.

Halfway through practice, Minal Auntie allows a two-minute break. The girls trudge upstairs and drink cupfuls of water from the tap. Through the vent, she can hear their high, girlish chatter, mostly nonsense, until they arrive at the topic of Twinkle Auntie: “Did you see her at the Unnikrishnan party?” “The one with the halter blouse?” “She gets her saris from Benzer World.” Minal Auntie listens for the word “Foodfest,” and thankfully it never comes.

Minal Auntie called to quit the day before. She kept her excuses vague, suspecting that Bill would beg her to stay. To her surprise, he wished her well and asked her to return the smock. It was only after she hung up that her relief made way for dismay. He had taken the news very smoothly, so smoothly that he might have been hoping for it all these months while she worked her register, oblivious to her own expendability. She lingered by the phone, wondering if she’d made a mistake.

After dance class, Minal Auntie washes the crowd of dirty cups the girls left behind in the sink. “Who raised these children?” she asks aloud, though the only other person in the kitchen is Aarti, sitting at the table and hiding behind a book.

“I washed my cup,” she says, but Minal Auntie only grunts in response.

The house used to belong to her brother, and seeing all these dirty glasses revives the old resentments that came of living with his family. He was the one who filled out her greencard application, and so in exchange, she was expected to wash up after the whole family—all those empty mugs and bowls ringed with grime. She taught dance from their basement, careful of her sister-in-law’s rules: no students upstairs, all shoes outside, and private lessons for her son in Carnatic singing—or cackling in Sagar’s case, which only made him a moving target after his school’s talent show. A year later, Minal Auntie’s brother announced that the family would be moving to Michigan. He expected her to go with them. Instead, Minal Auntie chose to rent the house until she could take over the mortgage. What a pleasure it was in those first few days after his departure, to sit in his favorite armchair and absorb the quiet hum of a house she could now call her own.

As Minal Auntie dries her hands on a towel, the doorbell rings. It is Lata, flushed and cheery, with her hands in the pockets of a sweatshirt. “Chachy, could I bother you for a glass of water?”

“What bother?” Minal Auntie waves her into the kitchen, offering other beverages and snacks. Lata declines them all, but Minal Auntie puts a plate of Nilla Wafers in front of her anyway. Rummaging around for clean glasses, Minal Auntie hears Aarti muttering with urgency about the amount of homework she has. “Then go sit in the car,” Lata says sharply. Aarti storms away in a huff.

Lata takes the glass of water from Minal Auntie and swishes the ice around. “So, six classes left until India Day, chachy. Are you nervous?”

“Oh, what is there to be nervous.”

“I hear they’re bringing in a politician.”

“That’s nothing new.” Last year, the India Day Festival was introduced by a small but peppy state congressman who commended the Indian community for its many contributions in fields as diverse as literature (Tagore), mathematics (the number zero), and language (words like pajamas and nabob), then left after the first act. “I’ve performed for all sorts of politician-type people.”

“But have you ever been on Asianet?” For the first time ever, Lata says, Asianet will be taping the competition and broadcasting the highlights worldwide. “If you guys win, it’ll be amazing exposure for the school. Who knows, maybe student enrollment will go up.”

“On TV?” Her stomach drops at the thought of what a television camera will mean. How it will take her picture and beam it into homes all over the world. Into Velu’s home, possibly the very same one in which he grew up. What if the camera zooms in? What will it see? And who else will see her?

Lata takes a small sip of her water and says she better take off before Aarti starts honking. “But you barely drank your water,” Minal Auntie says. “Take a biscuit at least.” Lata makes her way down the hall, claiming that she binged on granola this morning.

At the door, Lata pulls a small, folded paper from her pocket and gives it to Minal Auntie. She opens it, bewildered. It is a check made out to Minal Raman, in the amount of three hundred dollars.

“It’s no big deal, really,” Lata says. “I should be paying you a lot more, what with all the hours she spends over here.”

“Podi pennae!” Minal Auntie scolds her, half-mockingly. “I can’t take money from my sister’s daughter.”

“Please, Auntie.” Lata looks pained. She glances at her sneakers with none of her usual breeziness. It is then that Minal Auntie understands: Lata has heard all about Foodfest. This accounts for her sudden desire to pay, her new interest in student enrollment. “Really. You have no idea how much I’d have to pay for a nanny service. Plus there’s the money you spend on gas—”

“Take it back.” Minal Auntie speaks with the low control of an elder, Lata’s elder. “I don’t want your money.”

Minal Auntie holds out the check between two fingers. Lata takes it and folds it twice, her head bowed like a scolded child. Minal Auntie remembers chasing Lata when she was just a baby toddling around her mother’s legs, wearing a sun hat and sandals and nothing else. “I’m sorry if I …,” Lata says, then shakes her head and flashes a weak smile. “See you next week.”

Arms crossed, Minal Auntie watches the car pull away but does not wave. She returns to the kitchen and sits at the table, trying to reactivate the elation that came of Aarti’s words—even the clock stopped to watch. They taunt her now. The clock on the wall ticks on without pause, its noise interrupted by the occasional rattle of the icebox.

With a week until the show, Minal Auntie goes to an Indian beauty salon on Devon Avenue. She sits in the waiting area with a magazine in front of her face, sure that Twinkle Sharma will walk in at any moment and give her that same false smile of surprise and compassion. You? Here?

And why not? Over the magazine, Minal Auntie watches a stylist furl a long hank of hair around a brush, twisting her wrist at the end to sculpt a soft curve. The client stares vacantly at her reflection, spellbound by what she sees.

Moments later, Minal Auntie is lying back in a barber chair while a threader attacks her eyebrows, upper lip, chin, and sideburns. Her eyebrow hairs will not go easily, the roots a torture to rip out. Minal Auntie clenches her armrests, a stray tear squeezing out the corner of her eye. The stylist continues without pity.

After this is a cleansing process of rose water and soap, the cool burn of witch hazel. At last Minal Auntie sits up and looks in the mirror, pressing her fingertips to the tender contours of her face. The thin skin beneath her arching eyebrows and the space between them, the smooth plane of her cheek. It is an improvement, and yet, not enough.

The stylist points to the cashier and says, “Pay there.”

Minal Auntie musters the courage to quietly ask, “Have you heard of Light & Luminous?”

“Hah, yes, we use this in the Fairness Facial. You want to have the Fairness Facial?”

Does she? The stylist stands over Minal Auntie, hands on hips, waiting impatiently for an answer.

“Okay,” says Minal Auntie.

The stylist leads her to a corner of the salon, where Minal Auntie lies back in another chair and closes her eyes. The process begins peacefully, with warm towels draped over her face. Once the towels are removed, the stylist scratches at her pores with something sharp, a process so painful that Minal Auntie forgets to ask about the toxicity of Light & Luminous. A smell of sulfur assaults her nose as the stylist spackles a cool, grainy cream across her cheeks, her jaw, her forehead. She is told to wait within that stinking mask, so she waits. She feels foolish, all these young women circling her, chattering in Gujarati as if she is of no more consequence than a potted plant.

Gradually, the bleach begins to tingle under her skin. She listens for the stylist’s footsteps to return. Just when the tingle begins to burn, the stylist comes back and scrapes away the cream with a warm, wet towel.

The stylist gives Minal Auntie a hand mirror. “See?”

Her color is only a slight shade lighter, just a hint of cream to her coffee, but unmistakable. There is a glow to her face, a lively radiance from within. The stylist is nodding, the others gathering around in a chorus of wonder and affirmation. Buoyed by these voices, she believes them. Her new self has expanded to fill the frame of the old, fresh and resplendent, immune to pain.

At the India Day competition, the debris from performances past are strewn all across the dressing room floor: sprays of bobby pins and rubber bands, mirrors spattered with round red bindis and their sticky entrails. The air smells of waxy cosmetics and metallic aerosols. Throngs of girls fill the room, dressed in punjabis or chaniya cholis or classical costumes, except for Twinkle’s girls, who wear sequined black nighties over red satin pants, their outfits as simple as their routines. Twinkle remains nowhere to be seen, perhaps sealed off in a dressing room of her own. One hour until stage call. There are always more flowers to add, more hooks and eyes to fasten, enough details to quickly whittle two hours down to twenty minutes.

Minal Auntie spends only a few minutes in the dressing room to inspect her dancers and give them last-minute tips. “Reshma and Rashmi, don’t confuse left and right. Pinky, when you call to Krishna, don’t make that sexy face. Backs curved. Knees bent. Fingers stiff. Okay?”

They nod mechanically, absorbing nothing but in need of her attentions all the same. She has applied every faceful of makeup, has held each of their sharp little chins in her hand while lining their eyes with kohl. They stand around her like a pack of wide-eyed marmots.

Minal Auntie tells her students to finish up their costumes, and she will return in thirty minutes to practice once more. Dismissed, the girls head to whatever space their mothers have staked out with garment bags and plastic Caboodles.

Minal Auntie slings her costume over her shoulder and climbs the fire-exit stairs. The chaos of the dressing room fades behind to a distant echo. Earlier in the evening, she had searched for a secluded space in which to change; the second-floor bathroom will do. Here the tiles are free of mildew, the mirrors clean, unlike the dressing room mirrors faintly gauzed with streaks.

She hangs her garment bag on the bathroom door and draws down the zipper, releasing a wave of cedar scent, anxiety, adrenaline. She pinches the pleats, the gold still stiff though the wine-red silk has softened with washings and wear. She fingers each deliberate stitch her mother made along the shoulder in mismatching red thread. One by one, she fastens each of six separate pieces around her body, and though some of the hooks strain against the eyes, the costume hugs her as close as it should.

Before tackling her hair, Minal Auntie drapes a towel over her chest and unscrews the tube of Light & Luminous. A week has passed since she left the salon with a brand-new face, and her old one has crept back into the mirror. She was planning to touch herself up in the morning, but with the whirlwind of bells and nail polish and bindis, she couldn’t find fifteen minutes for herself.

She prepares the mixture, pauses, then taps in a bit more powder. Holding her nose, she frosts her face thickly. The sulfur smell fills her mouth.

As the cream sets, Minal Auntie braids her hair, injecting bobby pins. Her skin begins to tingle. To distract herself, she thinks of Twinkle. Is she wearing the same outfit as her students, black sequins and red satin, a frayed scrap of red georgette pinned over her head? A warmth prickles across Minal Auntie’s skin. She draws deep breaths of air.

Before she has a chance to rinse the cream from her face, she hears the jingling of footsteps down the hall, the lazy chatter of girls. She shoves her makeup into her bag and locks herself in the handicapped stall, moments before they burst through the door.

Voices and the slap of bare, belled feet. “I told you guys there’s an open bathroom,” says Pinky. Minal Auntie nearly backs into the toilet, holds her breath. “We can practice in private here.”

“What’s this white stuff?” Rashmi says.

“Ew. It smells like pee.” A pause. “What’s ‘Light & Luminous’?”

Minal Auntie’s eyes are stinging. Waves of cold seethe across her skin.

“Dude,” Pinky says. “Is this what Minal Auntie’s been using?”

“No way,” says Aarti. “She wouldn’t touch that stuff.”

“How do you know?”

“I wanted to buy some one time, but she wouldn’t let me. She said it was stupid.” Aarti hesitates. “She said your color is your color, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“She said it like that?”

“Whatever,” Aarti says. “It’s true.”

Minal Auntie is jolted by the sound of her own words in Aarti’s mouth, spoken with such flat resignation. It seemed, at the time, like honesty, meant to equip the girl with a tougher skin.

“Oh, please,” Pinky says. “She obviously uses it. Her face looks all chalky and stuff. A facial doesn’t make you look chalky. I’ve had them before.”

“Pinky, come on—”

“No, I’m sick of this new Minal Auntie! She acts like our dance is her diva moment. She’s supposed to be our teacher.”

“Twinkle Auntie’s dancing with her girls.”

“I watched them rehearse,” Pinky says. “Twinkle Auntie goes on at the end for, like, a minute, and she’s in the back the whole time. She didn’t make herself the star. What Minal Auntie’s doing, it’s …” Pinky falters. “It’s embarrassing.”

Minal Auntie waits for Aarti to defend her, but no one does.

“So should we practice or what?” Rashmi asks.

Minal Auntie can bear the stinging cream no longer. She unlocks the stall door, and aside from a few small gasps, the girls go dead quiet. She looks straight ahead as she strides to the counter. Turns on the faucet. Throws handfuls of water over her face. Gritty white dollops plop onto the porcelain of the sink.

“Auntie, we didn’t know you were in there,” Pinky says weakly. Minal Auntie scrubs her cheeks in slow, mechanical circles. She feels spent, as though she’s been dancing for days and has nothing left. She can’t go onstage, knowing what everyone thinks of her. But she must. She has made herself the star.

Minal Auntie dries off her face with a paper towel. In the mirror, her old face looks back at her, only the slightest shade lighter than her tamarind brown. With trembling fingers, she brushes her own cheek, just as she did at nine years old, when she snuck out of her house at nightfall, the hand mirror in her fist, to see if Velu was right. And here she thought she had outgrown that little girl, had shed her like an old, dead skin.

“Auntie,” Aarti says. “Are you okay?”

The gazes of the girls press against her on every side, their silence far louder than any noise they could make all together. She opens her mouth to speak, but a shiver passes through her as if she is still stranded in the middle of a night so dark, she has all but disappeared.