Manirambha.

She sat across the courtyard, in a palanquin of sandalwood embellished with metal trinkets.
Polished in finest dyes scented with jasmine and ylang ylang.
Peeping out from its intricately carved arch which just let an observer,notice the aura around the penumbra of her porcelain chin sinking into the depths of her throat, as the waterfall of her hair was,falling onto her shoulder and cascading across the bones that gave way to the pits of her heart,ornamented on her bosom.

As royalty from the berried sunskies in Manhattan now her feet ascended onto the land of Maya.
Of snake charmers and ebony skinned women and ripened raw mangoes.

She had come back to roots.

Her mother was the god child where the sun kissed the sand on this side of the earth.
She belonged here , just like her mother had till providence took her away to the land of the equal opportunist.
Her mother was the love of the brigadier who came on a pleasure visit to India.

he was white,though.
So she went along.

But Manirambha felt the familiarity of this red soil.
Like the wisdom and pathos of this soil had been passed on to her through the umbilical.

Of this courtyard.
Where being enchanted was a familiarity.
Of ghungru sounds and sweet smelling withered flowers swiveling in the dust storm of noon.
Or temple bells that rang in unison at the movement of the dancer of the evening.

Each of them could be an idol adorned on a stupa.
Frail sanctity and diligence personified.
They danced like a maestro was performing his best composition, alas to an audience of farmers who don't know anything about its brilliance.

And thus they were but danseuse of a forbidden world.
The ones that were always talked about during silence and in stupor with ale and alcohol.
They ones that saved many families and sustained many men.
The ones that will be condemned even in the future.
The women who did what every other woman does without her own will at least once.
The ones that are damned to be nailed against the cross of society.

Only because they belonged to another world.
Alongside our own.

Just like the trembling belief in the paranormal.
Today, tomorrow and hereafter they will wait to be freed like her own mother.
The ones that die and become one with the soil they served for.

This was the land where sex sold mercilessly and bodies were but a trade.
Where the heart was ripped into five and thrown across like morsels to a beggar.
Where the mind and mouth were opened and so was the conscience drowned.

So much so that it is today a verbal assault to us normal ones.
To compassion and its absence.
To death of diligence.
The epitome of ignorance and the proof of our heartlessness.