Antara was the Burmese princess, Tuptim, in "The King and I," singing "We speak in a  Whisper" with her lover, Lun Tha, when the heavy satin sash  slipped from her shoulder.  They met secretly, Lun Tha and  Tuptim, doomed in their love; she belonged to the King of Siam, having been gifted to him. The White Phantoms – Antara’s name for the convent nuns-  were outraged when the sash slipped.  They hissed at her from backstage to put it back on, almost making her forget her…

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The Divorce

 

Antara was glad when Mama left the house one evening for a "long drive" and did not return, but Meghna would never forgive it; to be loved and abandoned was perhaps greater sorrow than not being loved at all. Some months later when there was talk of divorce and custody, Antara dreaded the thought of testifying in court, telling the world she did not want to live with Mama; it would humiliate the woman who had borne her. 

 

And then she understood: it…

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My new novella - The Choosing - a sort of  female Pilgrim's Progress has just been published by Solstice Publishing. Love the cover.  They followed guidelines perfectly in terms of colours and feel.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Choosing-ebook/product-reviews/B004WP4W8A/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8

Nissa was a beautiful hilly town, where the wild flowering balsam threatened to usurp the land, and softened the pain Antara felt from Mama's constant beatings. Opposite their home, shaded by a giant plum tree with honey-sweet fruit, stood a lover’s lane embraced by trees filled with birds. Antara wished to walk it with the handsome Pandit Sir, her art teacher, who had anointed her forehead with the sacred red powder in a temple on a hill, leading the students to whisper that she was now… Continue

Antara wept, reading her Father's letter, so poetic in its pathos. All his pain for a mere dream her boyfriend Aries was dreaming about their escapade to some sleazy hotel room! Wasn't her father the only one she really loved, apart from Grandmother?



And Mama – he saw her as a dragon too, a dragon destroying everything in its path. Somehow the two sides of the dragon refused to fit into a perfect piece in the jigsaw of her childhood for it was Mama who had made… Continue

It was the Mulberry tree I loved best. I sat on its kind branches, my lips, my clothes stained with the purple juice of the fruit. Everything I touched turned purple: my white dress, the cherished pages of the red bound picture bible, the drawing book filled with my childish sketches.



Then, one day, at my touch, the enchanted trunk of the Mulberry tree parted down the middle and at its core stood the Red Fairy.



"We've been expecting you," she said in a musical… Continue

Then the music began, and hundreds of small, slender, shining figures began to dance in a circle beneath the moon.



"It is just as Grandmother said it would be, as I imagined it to be," I thought, my feet tapping to the music of fairy flutes and lyres.



"I should so like to fly to heaven on your swing," I said to the Red Fairy.



"Here all your dreams will come true, dear child." Her tenderness brought tears to my eyes. "I have the feeling you are… Continue

I heard Mama say, "My child, my poor child!" and felt for the first time, her hot tears upon my face. After a few moments, she set me down among the roses, and with a smile I had never seen before, said, “Let us play together."



Hand in hand we ran towards the giant red swing that hung from the moonlit skies; pink roses sprang wherever she stepped, and I knew Mama was transformed.



Breathless and laughing, she sat upon the swing, and lifting me onto her warm lap, began to… Continue

Beyond my reach, on the edge of my misery, my younger sister Meghna watched me suffer Mama's hairbrush spankings with pained, puzzled eyes. Mama did not beat the plump, pretty Meghna.



Oh, there were times when we sisters were one; when we hunted together for the wild black berries the sunning lizards so loved to gobble; chased butterflies, gathered the succulent mangoes felled by the hot dust-laden winds of summer; and captured the seed fairies of the dandelion.… Continue

“The angel I saw – was he real?” I asked Grandmother, for in the cold dark room Mama had locked me in, a Being of Light had come to comfort me in a rush of blinding white wings.



“Angels come to good people."



“But Mama says I’m ugly.”



“Don’t believe her, my Princess" she said taking me in her arms and I breathed deep the crisp, clean scent of her saree.



Grandmother's arms had rocked me to sleep; her hands had fed me, clothed me, laid me… Continue

Yet she made me believe in the impossible. She said the dandelion seeds floating on the breeze were fairies. I watched for fairies on moonlit nights. The moon brought peace to my troubled mind, raining cool silver down on me.

I knew I had a special destiny. That somewhere there was a great love waiting to be found. Even if it meant kissing a lot of frogs - men to be strung upon my Kali's necklace of skulls.

All my life has been an attempt to prove Mama wrong.



She drove me to seek power from my rituals of magic; from my conquest of men: skulls to be hung upon my Kali's necklace. Mama's fiery dragon breath sought me out across the years, purging me of the things I had to discard, until I could become the sincere spiritual aspirant I was destined to be.



"Take it away!" she cried when I was born, a helpless bundle, shrieking at the bitterness of a winter dawn.



Mama was the… Continue