LIFE AS IT IS

“TACKY,” she thought. The foundation color is too light for her skin tone; it makes her look almost like a ghost. “Well, ghost is what I am now, for the mortal me died long, long ago,” Shujata said to herself. She still walks, eats, laughs, weeps and… sleeps with men, which is what she does for a living, but her soul leapt from her battered body 5 years ago. She rummages through her red plastic bag for a lipstick. She has four colours altogether-red, bright red, dark pink and deep magenta. People say that girls like Shujata can attract more men when they wear such garish colours. There had been many days when she wished to wear a light shade of brown, but she never had a chance. She does not have a place to go, a place where she can go and be herself, where she can breathe in fresh air and watch cuckoos fly in the blue sky. The pungent alleys, the filthy men with even filthier insides, the worn-out walls and the impoverished, hopeless women like her are all that she sees every day,...