I wonder where my sense of shame had gone.

I had not a moment to look at myself—my days and nights were whirling around me like a storm. So, in those days, shame found not the slightest gap to enter my mind.

One day, right in front of me, my elder sister-in-law, laughing, said to my husband, “Dear brother-in-law, all these years in your house it has always been the women who have wept; now it is the men’s turn, now we shall make you cry. What do you say, little queen? You have donned your battle attire, warrior maiden—now strike the man’s heart with your arrow!”

Saying this, she let her eyes travel over me from head to toe. In my dress and adornment, in my manner and movement, some new hue was shining forth from within, and not the slightest trace of it escaped my sister-in-law’s gaze. Today, I feel ashamed to write of it, but in those days I felt no shame at all. For then, my entire nature was acting from within itself—I did nothing with calculation or design.

I know that day I had dressed up a little more than usual. But it was as if absentmindedly. I could always clearly understand which of my adornments Sandipbabu especially liked. Besides, there was no need to guess; Sandipbabu would discuss it openly in front of everyone. One day, right before me, he said to my husband:

“Nikhil, the day I first saw our queen bee—sitting quietly, draped in that sari with the golden border, her eyes gazing into the infinite like two lost stars—as if, in search of something, waiting for someone, she had been looking out across the shoreless darkness for thousands upon thousands of years—then, something trembled within my heart. It seemed as though the flames of her inner fire were entwined around her, flickering along the edges of her sari. This is the fire I desire—this living, visible fire. Queen bee, I have only one request: grant us another vision of you, adorned once more in that fiery radiance.”

All these days, I had been like a small river in a village—my own rhythm, my own language. But one day, without warning, the tide of the sea swept in—my breast swelled, my banks overflowed, and to the beat of the sea’s drum, the music of my own current began to resound and surge; within the depths of my own blood

I could not grasp the true meaning of that sound at all.

Where had I gone? Suddenly, from where did this wave of beauty surge and foam within me? Sandipbabu’s two unsatisfied eyes seemed to blaze like worship lamps toward my beauty. That I am wondrous in beauty and in strength—this truth began to ring out in all of Sandipbabu’s looks and words, like the temple bells shattering the sky. That day, all other sounds of the world were drowned beneath it.

Did the Creator fashion me anew today? Did He repay, in