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"What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin."

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I killed my mother when I was five.

Oh, come on! Stop raising your eyebrows at my story already, like I'm some unreliable narrator. I see it in your eyes every time I continue. I know you are still stuck on that incident with my father. Ah, you keep wounding me. You like it, don't you? Tracing that nail against my neck to see if I will bleed.

I didn't kill him, if you're wondering. Not then, at least. My father wasn't even the first skin I traced until the pulse mottled down into a sense of perpetual absence. Nonetheless, would you like to hear about it?

Tch

You're too busy chasing the story. Let it come to you. And don't you, too, think this is getting too morbid? I'll tell you the nice parts. The parts you didn't get to hear at the theatre.
But draw me another hand first.

About the incident with my father, when I hit him, I took a nice warm bath, and warm baths were a rarity in our household, but I took one till the reeking stench of metal subsided into the fragrance of multani mitti. The concoction wasn't effective enough for the dirt settling in hair, let alone to cleanse the blood off my hair. But I kept scrubbing till my scalp would liquidate itself into a pool of blood. It, obviously, didn't do much to the matt of my hair, but then far, it was enough. At least I thought so back then.

Stepping back into the house, I pocketed a few coins from my father's cotton pouch and ran to the nearest candy shop. These little bombs of sugar were the newest addition to the markets, and while women weren't allowed to step out of the house, the shopkeeper next to our home had regarded my mother as a sister for too long to accuse her of anything questionable.

When I first met him, I was scared out of my wits looking at his bushy moustache that would make up for twenty-five sets of lips alone. I quacked in my nonexistent boots and almost pissed my pants.

Keyword: almost.

"What are you looking at?" I had demanded. Earning a glare from my mother.

But he stood there, taller than my mother, taller than my father. With a frown that could rest lazily atop the Himalayas, he considered me for several moments. One leaping towards the next, I was unsure if my mother could afford to protect anyone when she couldn't even protect herself. But as all those moments of severe uncertainty and absolute fear lapsed, he smiled. He smiled at me, and his moustache fluttered a little as he breathed out.

From then on, he was Amru kaka for me. A name I had creatively bestowed upon him for the sour mango candies he meticulously laid on the countertop of his kiosk. Amru, a childish petulance to spin off something aam-like.

I turn to my cards, and there are no deuces. I'm not starting as a lowlife this once.

In the days that followed, getting sweet-lathered delicacies from Amru kaka's shop was a religious intonation of my days. Thus, the easiest and the most affordable option the five-year-old I could muster after puncturing her father's penis with a screwdriver was to get mango candies from Amru kaka.

I was ecstatic, rolling on adrenaline.

"Do I smell blood on you, gudiya?"

I froze no later than the words left his mouth.

I'll ask you a question that has been lingering on my mind for a while: how many times is a story repeated until it becomes believable? So when you look at it, it isn't just about the rough edges but also about all the blunt ones that have been marred with the stories of various lives that have passed through its fingers.

Do you know what your problem is? Do you know why you don't trust me? Why, the most plausible possibility that comes to your head, is that I am an unreliable narrator? It's because you hate losing power. The same power that lurks from one shoulder to the next, coiling its grip around your neck like a serpent. Withholding air and truths.

But it is the truth of the world, is it not? Withholding, that is. You're here for my secrets, and if I lay them all bare, what's here for you to stay? But I'll tell you nonetheless. Do you know why, itoshii? That's because no matter how many secrets I tell you, you'll always be hungry for more.

And when the secrets die down in the pit of my stomach, you'll scratch at the arteries of my beating heart. To see if the same emotions could pulse through you, and you can say that you understand, so you can prove to the world your tales of wisdom and empathy.

But do you know what will be a worse fate? My karma catching up to me. My secrets spilled to you like my mother's to me. I'd hate to lose control over what's mine, and I'll rather die before you know it, if not from me. Who knows what lies would be fed to you and I care too much about your stomach to let anything in it that doesn't deserve to be there.

I know the pain of being someplace one shouldn't be. I've learnt it the hard way. So I'll tell you itoshii, I'll tell you my story and everything that made me who I am.

But I have two conditions. One, don't let anyone walk in and reshuffle the cards unannounced like you did today, yeah? Second, for each secret of mine that I tell you, you'll tell me one of yours. But we both know that we aren't people of our words. So every time you break one of the two rules, I'll squeeze out one thing that's precious to you. And each time I break one? You can pay me back with the same favours, only double.

Deal?

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