The sun hung low over the sprawling haveli like a lazy eye, casting golden fingers through the latticed windows. It was the seventh dawn since Meera had stepped across the threshold as a bride, her simple red lehenga now folded away in a dusty trunk, replaced by the endless cycle of cotton sarees and household drudgery. At nineteen, she was a vision of untouched bloom fair skin glowing like fresh cream, raven hair braided loosely down her back, and eyes wide as a doe's, brimming with the naive trust of a girl raised in a mud-walled village where dreams were bartered for dowry.

But salvation, Meera was learning, tasted of dust and solitude. Her husband, Vikram barely noticed her. In their bridal chamber, he had poked at her pallu like it was a new toy, then wandered off to chase fireflies in the courtyard, leaving her untouched, her virgin body a secret garden overgrown with confusion and quiet ache. "Khelna hai, please !" he'd cry to the empty air, as if his dead mother still tucked him in, oblivious to the wife who mopped his spills and folded his rumpled kurtas.