Chapter 10: Night Eight (Pink)
Ananya brought her pink lipstick. She put it on me carefully, and then stepped back.
“Hmm,” she said. “Too dark for you.”
Mummy was passing by with the aarti plate. She stopped and looked at me.
“Too dark,” she agreed. “Wait.”
She went to her room and came back with her own lipstick, a soft, light pink. The one she wore to the bank every day. She wiped Ananya’s off my lips with the corner of her dupatta and put hers on me. Then she fixed one corner with her thumb.
“There,” she said. “That’s better.”
She went back to the aarti as if this was something she did every evening.
I stood there with my mother’s lipstick on my lips. I had seen her put it on every morning for twenty-four years. I didn’t know I would ever wear it.
After the aarti, Ananya pulled me by the hand into her room. She opened her cupboard and took out a pair of pink leggings, the same soft pink as the lipstick, and a white top I had never seen before.
“Here,” she said, and put them in my hands. “Why stop at one thing, sister?”
Sister.
I looked at the clothes in my hands. Then at her. I didn’t know what to say. So I just hugged her, tightly, the way I hadn’t hugged her since we were children.
“Thank you,” I said into her shoulder.
“Oh, Didi, no thank yous,” she said. Then she pushed me away, laughing. “Stop it now, will you please?”
Didi.
I couldn’t stop smiling. I changed into the pink leggings and the white top, and I was still smiling all through dinner.
That night, Mummy said, “Tomorrow is the last night. Keep your evening free. I have something for you.”
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