| Ritika Bali | October 2025 | Flash Fiction |
“You have brought misfortune upon our family. You killed my son!” Raji’s mother-in-law shrieked, seizing her by the shoulders and jolting her back and forth. She hung limp, neither resisting nor crying out, only needle pricks of exhaustion knotting across her skin.
Perhaps the mother-in-law is right, Raji thought. Why else would her husband suddenly die within five months of their marriage? He was so young. True, girls born on Saturdays were said to carry bad luck, but then she remembered her Ma’s words clearly: It was a Tuesday, beneath a propitious full moon, that I laboured to bring you into the world.
When her husband’s ashes dissolved into the holy river, the green, purple and yellow bangles shattered from her wrists, the streak of vermillion erased, she was left only in monochrome. From then on, her feet staggered under her, toes curled in a perpetual terror, as though she had woken from a trance. Her room in the new house didn’t look like hers anymore. On some nights, the bright, bold moon watched over her and the tiny cat she had resurrected from the paper scrap that had drifted through the window. It was a trick Ma had taught her long ago, using pages from the notebook Raji was forbidden to touch after being forced out of school. But on most nights, she shuddered upon looking at her own shadow, tracing the beast in it like everyone else now swore they saw.
When clarinets shrilled, drums pounded and men and women sang songs of luck and prosperity at Sita’s wedding, Raji was locked away alone in the vile beast’s company.
All day, she lay huddled on the summer-baked alluvial, separated from it only by a thin white sari. Sharp rocks poked her shoulders, legs and spine. Once, watching a cow wallowing in straw, she gathered some for herself, only to discover it was not comfort but the cow’s way of scratching an unbearable itch. The stalks raked her raw. Even the cat grew weary of keeping her company, its purrs fading at the windowsill.
“You must redeem your life by scrubbing your soul clean of past sins,” Ma admonished gravely. Past sins? She’d always been pleasant to everyone, fed and groomed the goats without fail, confessed to the only lie she had ever told—sneaking the laddoos meant for the groom’s family, endured the deserved thrashing, wept herself into a fever when Baba butchered the chickens for her wedding feast. He had even paid her dowry! What could have possibly gone wrong?
A widow living in the village for too long was surely a bad omen. Not even lemons, chilies, or rituals could shield the community from the disasters her presence would summon. It was, after all, God’s will for Raji to suffer, so no one dared to intervene. As decreed by the families and sanctioned by the panch, she was sent where all young widows were destined to go.
***
The ayah’s heavy footfalls faded down the stairs of the ashram. Even after a month, unlike other girls, Raji couldn’t rest her eyes while strands of sunlight barged into the hall from the mullioned window. Why she must sleep before dusk and rise at dawn like the mynas, she couldn’t fathom. Yet as she watched a hundred of them wheel freely over the sea, along the coastline, while her lips moved in dutiful prayers of forgiveness, her mouth puckered in disquiet.
A sudden glint caught her eye—the crumpled cat lying on the mat, the only possession Raji had carried from the village. Carefully, she reshaped it into a bird and held it close. From the window, she saw a group of boys leaping and shouting across the water’s edge. A familiar yearning rose in her, and memories of untroubled days with Sita surfaced.
A voice warned—first her Ma’s, then the mother-in-law’s, then her Baba’s, until it swelled into the chorus of the entire village. Don’t you dare. The sea is full of evil. You will pay dearly for this insolence. She dithered. But what worse fate could befall a widow?
So she did the unthinkable.
She tucked the pleats of her sari between her legs, her small frame slipping down the corridor, past the stairs, through the foyer, gliding unnoticed while the ayahs gossipped about the eight-year-old Kali. She zigzagged through the bramble until she burst into a jubilant grove of palms. The golden sands, strewn with turret and cockle shells, glowed as ethereally as the sky’s western fringe. She treaded a straight path, savoring the warmth beneath her feet, the tips of her toes burnished brown.
She drifted toward the boys. They scarcely noticed her, absorbed in hopscotching, kicking up arcs of sand, hair bleached by sun, salt and fish-scales clinging to their shorts, eyes as bright as beams on bronze. Two men came running, waving toward a boat that seemed to appear out of nowhere, bobbing toward shore. The boys abandoned their play and rushed to help, their small bodies tugged and tossed by the undertow as they heaved alongside the men. Soon, the catch was being hauled and celebrated, while the boat lay tethered to the wharf, surging against the frothing current like a wild horse bucking at the reins.
Raji studied the sturdy frame of the boat, then smoothed the scrap of paper against her knee. Following its creases, it folded itself layer by layer—inwards, outwards, sideways like magic—as if remembering its own form. She set it on the water and breathed into it once, twice, thrice, until she was emptied of breath.
The tiny vessel stirred to life.
Raji stood tall as the palms, her voice breaking into the wind and her heart rushing with the waves. The sun flamed behind her paper sail as it glided forward, cresting into an ever-majestic, ever-boundless crescendo.
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Ritika Bali is a short story writer from Lucknow. She was the runner-up for the 2024 Deodar Prize and 2024 Ruskin Bond Literary Award and was on the shortlist for the Alpine Fellowship. Her short fiction has been featured in Hammock Magazine, Mistake House, Kitaab and more.
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Photo by Hardik Pandya on Unsplash
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